Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

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Politeness in Mexico and the United States

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&BNS) Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences.

Editor Andreas H. Jucker

University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey

University of Southern Denmark

Herman Parret

Jef Verschueren

Susan C. Herring

Emanuel A. Schegloff

Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Indiana University

Masako K. Hiraga

University of California at Los Angeles

David Holdcroft

Georgetown University

Sachiko Ide

Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Sandra A. Thompson

Thorstein Fretheim

Catherine KerbratOrecchioni

John C. Heritage

Claudia de Lemos

Teun A. van Dijk

Marina Sbisà

Richard J. Watts

Jean Caron

Université de Poitiers

Robyn Carston

University College London

Bruce Fraser

Boston University University of Trondheim University of California at Los Angeles

St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University University of Leeds Japan Women’s University

University of Lyon 2 University of Campinas, Brazil University of Trieste

Deborah Schiffrin

Paul Osamu Takahara

University of California at Santa Barbara Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona University of Berne

Volume 171 Politeness in Mexico and the United States A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals by J. César Félix-Brasdefer

Politeness in Mexico and the United States A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals

J. César Félix-Brasdefer Indiana University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Felix-Brasdefer, J. Cesar. Politeness in Mexico and the United States : a contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals / J. Cesar Felix-Brasdefer. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 171) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Politeness (Linguistics)--Mexico. 2. Politeness (Linguistics)--United States. 3. Speech acts (Linguistics) 4. Interpersonal relations. I. Title. P299.H66F45 2008 306.44--dc22 2007040711 isbn 978 90 272 5415 3 (Hb; alk. paper)

© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

List of figures and tables Transcription conventions Acknowledgements Introduction

ix xi xiii 1

chapter 1 7 The scope of politeness 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 Origins of polite behavior: Past to present 7 1.3 The politeness1 vs politeness2 distinction 10 1.4 Grice’s cooperative principle and the maxim of politeness 11 1.5 Face/facework, politeness, and relational work 13 1.5.1 Goffman’s notion of ‘face’ and facework 13 1.5.2 Lakoff ’s rules of politeness 15 1.5.3 Leech’s politeness principles 16 1.5.4 Brown and Levinson’s universal model of linguistic politeness 17 1.5.5 Fraser’s conversational contract 21 1.5.6 Arndt and Janneys’ supportive facework and interpersonal politeness 23 1.5.7 Spencer-Oatey’s view of rapport management 24 1.5.8 Ide’s typology of linguistic politeness: Discernment and volition 25 1.5.9 Haverkate’s typology of politeness strategies: Functional and formal categories 26 1.5.10 Scollon & Scollon’s intercultural communication and face systems 27 1.5.11 Watts’ politic behavior and relational work 29 1.5.12 The current study: Face, relational work, and polite behavior 31 1.6 Concluding remarks 33

vi


chapter 2 Speech acts in context: Refusals 2.1 Introduction 35 2.2 Speech act theory 35 2.3 Speech act theory as an approach for examining speech act sequences 39 2.3.1 Internal modification of a refusal sequence: Epistemic markers 40 2.4 Speech acts in context 41 2.5 The speech act of refusals 42 2.5.1 Empirical studies on refusals 44 2.5.2 Studies on English and Spanish refusals 51 2.6 Concluding remarks 55

35

chapter 3 57 Methodology and organization of the study 3.1 Introduction 57 3.2 Methodological issues: Data collection methods in pragmatics research 57 3.2.1 Ethnographic data 58 3.2.2 Production questionnaires: Discourse completion tasks 59 3.2.3 Role plays 60 3.2.4 Verbal reports 60 3.3 Organization of the current study 62 3.3.1 Participants 62 3.3.2 Instrumentation 63 3.4 Pilot study 64 3.4.1 Participants, instrumentation, and data collection procedures 65 3.4.2 Results of the pilot study 66 3.5 Data collection procedures for the current study 68 3.5.1 Role-play scenarios used in the present study 68 3.5.2 Retrospective verbal reports 71 3.6 Pragmatic strategies as manifestations of relational work 72 3.6.1 Pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals 72 3.6.1.1 Direct refusals 73 3.6.1.2 Indirect refusals 74 3.6.1.3 Adjuncts to refusals 79

3.7

Table of contents vii

3.6.2 Internal modification of a refusal sequence: Expressions of epistemic modality 81 Data analysis 82

chapter 4 Results: Relational work and linguistic politeness: The negotiation of refusals by Mexicans and Americans 85 4.1 Introduction 85 4.2 Refusal strategies as manifestations of relational work 86 4.3 Individual variability and speech act production 92 4.4 Face systems and situational variation 94 4.4.1 Hierarchical face system: Farewell, Bookstore, Advisor (+P, +D) 96 4.4.1.1 The negotiation of face in an employee-boss relationship: Farewell and Bookstore 96 4.4.1.2 Refusing a professor’s suggestion: Advisor (+P, +D) 102 4.4.2 Deference face system – Notes (–P, +D) 108 4.4.3 Solidarity face system – Birthday and Bar (–P, –D) 113 4.4.3.1 Declining an invitation from a friend – Birthday (–D) 114 4.4.3.2 Refusing a friend’s suggestion to go to a bar – Bar (–D) 120 4.5 Internal modification of the refusal sequence: Expressions of epistemic modality 126 4.5.1 Mental state predicates 128 4.5.2 Modal adverbs 131 4.5.3 Degree modifiers 132 4.5.4 Tag questions 134 4.6 Concluding remarks 136 chapter 5 Results: Perceptions of politeness: Cultural values of refusals among Mexicans and Americans 139 5.1 Introduction 139 5.2 Cognition: Attention to linguistic and sociocultural information 139 5.2.1 Perception of refusals in a hierarchical face system (+P, +D) 140 5.2.2 Perception of refusals in a deference face system (–P, +D) 144 5.2.3 Perception of refusals in a solidarity face system (–P, –D) 147 5.3 Perception of directness or indirectness 149

viii Politeness in Mexico and the United States

5.4 5.5

Perception regarding an insistence in the act of declining an invitation 153 Concluding remarks 156

chapter 6 159 Conclusions and discussion 6.1 Introductory remarks 159 6.2 The negotiation of a refusal and face systems 160 6.2.1 Forms of address and linguistic politeness 162 6.3 Insistence as a discourse strategy 163 6.4 The discourse function of epistemic expressions: Internal modification of a refusal 164 6.5 Perceptions of politeness 165 6.6 The notion of ‘face’ in Mexico 166 6.7 Refusals across languages 168 6.8 Issues on research methodology and implications for future research 172 References Appendix Author index Subject index

175 185 191 193

List of figures and tables

Figures Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4.

Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson 1987: 69) Relational work (Watts 2005: xliii) Distribution of situations by face system Verbal probe questionnaire used during the retrospective verbal interview Figure 5. Individual variation in the preference for pragmatic strategies during the negotiation of a refusal among the American participants Figure 6. Individual variation in the preference for pragmatic strategies during the negotiation of a refusal among the Mexican participants Figure 7. Situational variation according to face system (Hierarchical [+P, +D], Deference (–P, +D], Solidarity [–P, –D]). Percentage of pragmatic strategies (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals) used by the Americans and the Mexicans Figure 8. Distribution of refusal head acts when declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell) Figure 9. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a professor’s advice (Advisor) Figure 10. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a classmate’s request (Notes) Figure 11. Distribution of refusal head acts when declining a friend’s invitation to a birthday party (Birthday) Figure 12. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a friend’s suggestion (Bar)


Tables Table 1.

Studies on refusals among native and non-native speakers in numerous languages and different varieties of English and Spanish Table 2. Overall distribution of pragmatic strategies among Americans and Mexicans (n = 2,491 strategies) Table 3. Most frequently used strategies by Americans and Mexicans to express relational work Table 4. Distribution of pragmatic strategies according to face system (Hierarchical [+P, +D], Deference [–P, +D], Solidarity [–P, –D]) and by situation among the Americans and the Mexicans (Total: 2,491 strategies) Table 5. Most frequently used strategies by Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when declining a boss’ invitation to attend a farewell party (Farewell) Table 6. Most frequently used strategies among Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a professor’s advice to take an extra class (Advisor) Table 7. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a classmate’s request to borrow class notes (Notes) Table 8. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when declining a friend’s invitation to attend a birthday party (Birthday) Table 9. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a friend’s suggestion (Bar) Table 10. Distribution of mitigators during the negotiation of a refusal by situation and by group (Americans = 185; Mexicans = 243) Table 11. Perception of direct and indirect refusals by situation among the Americans and the Mexicans (20 participants per group)

Transcription conventions (Adapted from Jefferson 2004)

These are the convention transcriptions that are used in the examples. A. Contiguous utterances = Equal signs indicate no break up or gap. They are placed when there is no interval between adjacent utterances and the second utterance is linked immediately to the first. B. Overlaps [ A left bracket indicates the point of overlap onset. ] A right bracket indicates the point at which two overlapping utterances end, if they end simultaneously, or the point at which one of them ends in the course of the other. It is also used to parse out segments of overlapping utterances. C. Intervals () Parentheses indicating the time in seconds and placed within an utterance mark intervals or pauses in the stream of talk. – A dash marks a short untimed pause within an utterance. D. Characteristics of speech delivery The up and down arrows mark sharp rises or falls in pitch.  A colon marks a lengthened syllable or an extension of a sound. More colons prolong a sound or syllable. Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis, either by increased loudness or higher pitch. . A period marks fall in tone. , A comma marks continuing intonation. ? A question mark signals rising intonation. E. Other markings (( )) Double parentheses are used to mark the transcriber’s descriptions of events. : ::: word

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to many people who were involved during the conceptualization and development of this book. First, I would like to thank three scholars for believing in this project which originated from the analysis of my dissertation data, and for the many hours of advice they kindly provided: Andrew Cohen, Carol Klee, and Carmen García. Also, this book would not have been possible without the financial support and collegial support I received at the University of Minnesota and grants from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Indiana University. My sincere thanks go to the students who agreed to participate in this project, the research assistants, and the faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota and Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Mexico. In particular, I would like to thank Prof. Ana Lucía Flores Aguilar at the Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala (Dept. of Filosofía y Letras) for facilitating the collection of the data for this project, and Prof. Tere Moreno Durán for her support during my undergraduate years. There are many family members and friends who continuously offered moral and academic support for the completion of this book. The education and the ‘rules of politeness’ I received from my parents in Mexico have surely influenced my interpretation of social interaction. The encouragement and academic and moral support I received from friends in Mexico and the United States, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, my brothers and sisters, and my compadres, Víctor Hugo and Blanca. Also, Allison Diercks for her help with the final editing of this manuscript, which she did gladly. And most importantly, I would like to thank Terri Greenslade and Maureen Taylor who kindly read this manuscript and provided me with valuable feedback, raised questions about various sections of the book, and made many editorial suggestions which allowed me to improve the quality of this manuscript. Gracias, Terri y Maureen! I would also like to thank the Editor of the series Pragmatics and Beyond, the reviewers who provided thoughtful comments, and the editorial staff at John Benjamins for the prompt attention given to this manuscript.

xiv Politeness in Mexico and the United States

Finally, I would like to thank two important people in my life to whom I dedicate the pages of this book, Terri and Gabriel. To Terri for her patience, moral support, her advice of polite (and impolite) behavior in the United States, and her unconditional love. And to Gabriel, my baby Einstein who was with me early in the day and late at night while I put the finishing touches of this book. They made this book a pleasant experience.

Introduction

The objective of this study is to examine the similarities and differences in the realization patterns and the perceptions of refusals by educated, male native speakers of Mexican Spanish and U.S. English in formal and informal situations. During the course of social interaction, a speaker performing a refusal may resort to a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions in order to communicate a refusal appropriately and according to the expected norms of interaction of a given culture. Some of these expressions may be used to soften the negative effects of a dispreferred response and to arrive at a mutual agreement with the interlocutor in conversation. In addition, throughout the course of social interaction, interlocutors tend to make assessments of the interaction and direct their attention to perceptions of polite and impolite behavior, the social distance and social power exerted by the participants, and the situation. Since a refusal, whether to a person of equal or unequal status, may create disagreement, conflict or tension between the interlocutors, the person refusing may resort to politeness as a discourse strategy to attenuate the effects of the unwelcome news. Refusals represent one type of dispreferred response and often occur as second pair parts in conversation. As a reactive speech act, refusals function as a response to an initiating act and are considered a speech act by which a speaker “[fails] to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (Chen, Ye, and Zhang 1995: 121). For this reason, refusals must be negotiated in social interaction. From a sociolinguistic perspective, refusals are important because they are sensitive to social factors such as gender, age, level of education, power, social distance, and because what is considered appropriate refusal behavior varies across cultures. From a pragmatic perspective, the negotiation of a refusal may entail frequent attempts at directness or indirectness and politeness or impoliteness that are appropriate to the situation and may vary according to the social values of a particular culture. The choice of a direct or indirect refusal and the appropriate degree of politeness employed will depend on the relationship between the participants (close or distant, power), age, gender, and the situation.


The review of the literature in face, politeness, and social interaction shows that there is a need for cross-cultural politeness research in languages other than English and Asian languages. As observed by Janney & Arndt (1993), comparative politeness research would probably be brighter if investigators acknowledged the importance of cultural identity in its various linguistic and other manifestations, and, instead of arguing about universals of politeness, started working on ways to deal with their own (cultural) limitations as observers and interpreters, and started trying to make current approaches more flexible in dealing with cultural variation generally. (p. 38)

More recently, Bargiela-Chiappini (2003) has acknowledged the necessity of comparative research on ‘face’ and facework in interpersonal communication; stating that: “Early’s conclusions point to the need to understand and compare cultural conceptualizations of the social self and its relationship to others as an alternative and possibly more fruitful way of studying the relevance and dynamics of face and face-work in interpersonal contacts’ (p. 1463). Other researchers have acknowledged the need for investigations in cross-cultural politeness to validate empirically theoretical notions of face, politeness, and relational phenomena (Arundale 2006; Haverkate 1988; Ide 1993; Locher & Watts 2005; Spencer-Oatey 2007; Watts 1989, 2003). Most importantly, while cross-cultural politeness research has been conducted in a few languages, with the comparative language often being British or Australian English (Fukushima 1996; Haverkate 1988, 1994; Jakubowska 1999; Márquez Reiter 2000; Sifianou 1992; Wierzbicka 2003, 2006), to date no study has conducted cross-cultural research that examines the realization of refusals and the perceptions of politeness among Mexicans and Americans (from the United States). The focus of this study is on the realization and the perception of refusals in Spanish and English from a cross-cultural perspective. A few studies in English have centered on the negotiation of refusals among native and non-native speakers of English (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991; Gass & Houck 1999; Labov & Fanshel 1977); others have contrasted the realization patterns of English with those of different varieties of Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, and Korean (AlIssa 1998; Al-Shalawi 1997; Beckers 1999; Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz 1990; Chen, Ye, & Zhang 1995; Cramer 1997; Kinjo 1987; Kwon 2004; Liao & Bresnahan 1996; Lyuh 1992; Nelson et al. 2002; Saeki & O’Keefe 1994; Stevens 1993). With the exception of a few studies that utilized interactional data (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991; Gass & Houck 1999; Labov & Fanshel 1977), the majority have examined written or non-interactional data to analyze the linguistic strategies for expressing refusals in isolated contexts.

Introduction

As far as Spanish is concerned, some speech acts have been examined in different varieties, yet the pragmatics of Mexican Spanish has received little attention (Bravo & Briz 2004; Márquez Reiter & Placencia 2004, 2005; Placencia & Bravo 2002). Studies on refusals in Spanish are limited to Peruvian, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, and Peninsular Spanish (García 1992, 1999; Margalef-Boada 1993; Ramos 1991; VonCanon 2006). Mexican Spanish represents the variety spoken by approximately 107,449,500 native speakers in Mexico and is spoken by more than 66% of the Hispanic population in the United States. Moreover, the Spanish language represents the most popular foreign language in the United States, studied by more than 746,267 students in institutions of higher education in America, which has shown a 13.7% growth since the year 1998. In light of these statistics, the number of immigrants from Mexico currently living in the United States, and the geographical proximity of Mexico, it is important to examine the refusal patterns in this variety. In addition, observing what Mexicans and Americans do in social interaction, how face relationships are negotiated and how the notions of politeness, social distance and power, and directness and indirectness are perceived during a refusal response by each society will further our understanding of cross-cultural communication. The framework of analysis adopted in the current investigation is embedded in the notion of relational work and linguistic politeness during human social interaction (Locher 2006; Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2003, 2005). Following Goffman’s (1967) notion of face which examines the negotiation of facework, in this book face is viewed as a relational concept which examines various aspects of human interaction between at least two interlocutors who negotiate their intentions in order to arrive at a mutual agreement in conversation. Further, in line with previous research on face, facework, and politeness, the negotiation of face relationships includes relating to and interacting with others; in this respect, face is both relational and interactional (Arundale 2006). In the present study, relational work refers to the work interlocutors engage in during the course of social interaction when negotiating their intentions with others in specific sociocultural contexts. One aspect of relational work that views social behavior in excess (i.e., . For a general (yet limited) overview of various aspects of politeness in Mexican Spanish, see Curcó (2007). . As of July 2006 (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mx.html#People) . This information represents a subset of the Hispanic population in the United States (http:// www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hispanic/ho00.html) . This information comes from the report on Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2002 (http://www.adfl.org/projects/index.htm)


marked social behavior) is linguistic politeness which will be the focus of this contrastive analysis, in particular, when the presence of linguistic expressions uttered by a speaker in specific situations may be open to a polite interpretation. In this study, I am primarily concerned with first-order politeness (or politeness1), namely, politeness-as-practice. It encompasses expressive politeness1 (linguistic expressions that may be open to a polite interpretation in specific situations) and metapragmatic politeness1 (perceptions of politeness), that is, how people talk about politeness as a concept in everyday interaction, and what people perceive politeness to be in different interactional practices (Eelen 2001; Watts 2003). Since this book examines social interaction in two cultures in formal and informal situations, I will adopt Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) face systems (hierarchical [+Power], deference [+Distance], solidarity [–Distance]), and both aspects of face (involvement, independence). This model of interpersonal communication was chosen to examine social interaction because it offers the opportunity to contrast both aspects of face in two different cultures, those of the United States (oriented towards independence) and Mexico (oriented towards involvement). The notion of ‘self ’ projected by Mexicans is collectivistic and more related to membership in a group such as a family, friends, or a work group. Most importantly, although both aspects of face are present during social interaction in every culture, the current study will show that among Mexicans and Americans either involvement or independence will predominate. In the present study, I view politeness as a social phenomenon that manifests itself through communicative and non-communicative acts between at least two interactants who engage in relational work to negotiate their intentions during social interaction. Politeness refers to a subset of social (appropriate) behavior that is part of everyday social interaction and that interlocutors may use to express relational work. While socially appropriate behavior may go unnoticed at times, polite behavior is perceived as over-appropriate, context-dependent, and as a set of marked assumptions and shared expectations between the interlocutors. During the negotiation of face, participants communicate their intentions by relating to others (relational) and reciprocating to the speaker (interactive). In the current study, it is assumed that relational work and linguistic politeness may cooccur during the negotiation of a refusal because interlocutors may wish to soften the negative effects of a direct refusal in an attempt to protect both the speaker’s and the addressee’s face. The speech act of refusing was selected for this investigation because it represents an interactive act in which the person refusing has to be tactful during the selection and interpretation of a dispreferred response, and the negotiation of face may vary from community to community, from speaker to speaker, and in formal and informal situations.

Introduction

Although the negotiation of a refusal may be realized by means of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions, the current study focuses on linguistic expressions as manifestations of relational work and linguistic politeness among Mexicans and Americans. To examine the negotiation of face during a refusal interaction, a range of pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals will be analyzed. In the current study, the classification of linguistic strategies will be referred to as pragmaic strategies (Chapter 3) that are strategically selected by a speaker to express relational work; and in fully contextualized situations, these expressions may be used to convey politeness. Further, to analyze the manifestation of politeness within a refusal response (internal modification), the current study examines elements of epistemic modality that serve to mitigate a refusal with tentativeness, respect, and, in specific contexts, with politeness. In general, the preference for the use of linguistic expressions during the negotiation of face will reflect different sociocultural values of refusals in two communities, one from Mexico and one from the United States. Having established the framework of analysis, I will now proceed to describe the methodology employed to gather the refusal data. Ideally, natural data are the preferred method for observing language use in context. The goal of the researcher who gathers natural data is to examine the way that people use language when they are not being observed, but as noted in Labov’s Observer’s Paradox (1972), researchers are often unable to achieve this ideal goal and must resort to other techniques such as the sociolinguistic interview that attempts to obtain natural and systematic data under controlled circumstances. In addition, due to the cross-cultural orientation of the current study, it was necessary to gather data in two cultures in a controlled way: using comparable (simulated) situations and with similar informant pools (male university-level students) in Mexico and in the United States. Thus, natural data are not examined here. Nevertheless, the data for the present study were triangulated by means of two methods: open role plays and retrospective verbal reports (Chapter 3). A role play instrument was chosen for research purposes, that is, to gather interactional data in comparable situations and in formal and informal settings in two communities: native speakers of Mexican Spanish and U.S. English. These data are complemented by retrospective verbal reports which are commonly used in pragmatics and psychology research to analyze perceptions of speech acts (Cohen 2004; Ericsson & Simon 1993; Kasper 2000). The verbal-report data, gathered immediately after the administration of the role-play session, are instrumental in examining the perceptions of the speech act of refusing and serve to validate the role-play data. Further, an analysis of the speakers’ perceptions of refusals will shed light on how cultural values (i.e., politeness, directness and indirectness, social distance and power) are perceived differently in Mexico and the United States. Although


much attention has been given to linguistic politeness as realized in face-to-face interaction, little attention has been devoted to an examination of the perceptions of politeness, with the exception of studies on British English (Mills 2003) and Israeli society (Blum-Kulka 1992). Similarly, to date only one study has made an effort to examine the cross-cultural perceptions, among Spaniards and Britons, of conventional indirectness when making requests (Márquez Reiter et al. 2005). The present investigation employed six different open role-play situations to elicit refusals in formal and informal settings including two refusals to an invitation, two to a request, and two to a suggestion. The role-play descriptions represent situations that commonly occur in Mexico and the United States, and were fully contextualized so as to provide the participants in each country with sufficient information regarding the speech event, including factors such as social distance (+/– D) and power (+/– P). Each role-play prompt contained a description of the setting, age and relationship between the interlocutors, and a description of the eliciting act by which participants refused an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. During the role-play session, each participant interacted with two different interlocutors; that is, a Mexican or an American speaker for each level of formality: a university professor for the three formal situations and a college student for the three informal refusals. All role-play situations and verbal reports were recorded and transcribed. The procedures for data collection and the benefits of using role-play and verbal report data are described in Chapter 3. The book is organized as follows: Chapter 1 discusses the most influential models on politeness to date that aim at examining social interaction and linguistic politeness; at the end of this chapter, the framework employed to analyze the refusal data from a cross-cultural perspective in the current study is presented (Section 1.5.12). Chapter 2 presents a critical overview of speech act theory and the notion of context with particular attention to the speech act of refusals as realized at the discourse level, refusal sequences. In this chapter, I examine the literature on refusals and highlight the type of data used to examine refusal behavior (natural or simulated); I also review the existing literature in English and Spanish refusals. Chapter 3 provides a description of the methodology used in the current study, including the informant pool in Mexico and the United States, the results of a pilot study, a classification of the pragmatic strategies used to analyze the data, and the procedures to collect and examine the data. The next two chapters present the results of the study: Chapter 4 provides the results obtained from the analysis of the role-play data (relational work and linguistic politeness), and Chapter 5 presents the results regarding the perceptions of politeness in each culture (metapragmatic politeness). Finally, Chapter 6 discusses the main conclusions of this contrastive study and identifies issues for future research.

chapter 1

The scope of politeness

1.1

Introduction

Politeness manifests itself in social interaction and is conditioned by the sociocultural norms dictated by the members of a society who negotiate their intentions by means of verbal and non-verbal actions. This chapter begins by describing the origins of the terms ‘polite’ and ‘politeness’ as commonly understood by members of the royal court in high society and how these notions have influenced our current understanding of polite behavior (1.2). To situate the framework of politeness in a cross-cultural perspective, I explain the distinction between first-order politeness, or Politeness1 (politeness-as-practice in everyday interaction), and second-order politeness, or Politeness2 (a theoretical construct or the scientific conceptualization of politeness1) (1.3). Then, Grice’s theory of meaning is discussed (1.4), followed by a critical overview of the most influential models of face/ facework, politeness, and relational work since the mid 1950s that have attempted to explain polite behavior in social interaction (1.5). At the end of this section, I present the theoretical framework that I will adopt in order to examine the pragmatic strategies employed in refusal responses and to evaluate the perceptions of these stragegies by Mexicans and Americans during the negotiation of refusals (1.5.12). The final section of this chapter presents the concluding remarks (1.6).

1.2

Origins of polite behavior: Past to present

Historically, the words ‘polite’ and ‘politeness’ can be traced back to general notions related to cleanliness or to smooth, polished, refined, planned, civilized, or courtly activity. Etymologically the English word ‘polite’ is derived from the Latinate past participle ‘politus’, from the verb ‘polire’, meaning ‘polished’ or ‘smoothed’. The word ‘courtesy’, in German ‘Höflichkeit’, in French ‘courtoisie’, in Dutch ‘beschaafdheid’, in Portuguese ‘cortesia’, or in Spanish ‘cortesía’ (‘politeness’) all refer back to its original root, alluding to polite or planned behavior in the court. The word


‘court’ is registered in 1175 from the Old French ‘curt’ (enclosed yard) and referred to people assembled in the courtyard and perhaps in association with ‘curia’ alluding to a ‘sovereign’s assembly’. The word ‘courteous’ is registered in 1275 from Old French ‘curteis’ or Middle English ‘corteis’, that is, ‘having courtly bearing or manners’. By way of French, the English language possesses the words ‘courtesy’ and ‘courteous’, but the terms ‘polite’ and ‘politeness’ are more commonly used in English. In English ‘polite’ is recorded in 1501 with a sense of something elegant or cultured, and in 1762 the word ‘polite’ acquires a sense of ‘behaving courteously’ (Online Etymology Dictionary http://www.etymonline.com/). In Roman society, however, the notion of politeness does not appear to have a connection to the court, but rather, to the big city (‘urbanitas’) or the urb which stressed the social demands of life and class differences of a civilized but elitist society where distant and hierarchical differences played a role. It is in the late Middle Ages in the feudal world that the concept of politeness is conceptualized as manners of the court, especially when members of the court communicated with one another about the forms of their social actions (Ehlich 1992). In addition, Ehlich noted that in the Middle Ages among the upper classes, the acceptance of politeness as courtly activity (politeness = courtesy) distinguished these social classes (e.g., the circle of courtly knights) on the basis of their feelings and expressions that were understood as polite social behavior. Later, the development of ‘courtoisie’ in the Middle Ages was replaced by the Latinate notion of civility: “In the course of the sixteenth century the use of the concept courtoisie slowly recedes in the upper class, while civilité grows more common and finally gains the upper hand, at least in France, in the seventeenth century” (Elias 1939/1978: 70). As a result, the substitution of ‘civilité’ for ‘courtoisie’ in the late sixteenth century slowly gave way to novel social relationships. As a result of social differences, the Middle Ages saw the introduction of the use of forms of address (e.g., personal pronouns, titles, honorifics) to differentiate lower and higher classes and to encode deference and politeness. In fact, the development of polite forms took place at the social periphery and represented one “of the fundamental early forms of social organization” (Ehlich 1992: 88). For example, the origins of the formal and informal forms of address in Spanish can be traced back to Latin, where tú (‘you’-INFORMAL) was employed as the second-person singular of familiarity and vos (‘you’-FORMAL) as the second person singular of respect (Resnik 1981: 89). Although vos was originally a second-person plural form in Latin, it came to be used as the singular of respect to address one person, a Roman emperor in the 4th century, and later it was used to address others of superior status. Thus, vos was used between status equals in the upper class in formal discourse, while the lower class was required to use it as a sign of respect to their superiors. By the end of the Middle Ages, due to the extension and

Chapter 1. The scope of politeness

overuse of vos in the lower class, this address form lost its denotation of respect and was then used to express familiarity between status equals (Corominas 1961). After vos was filtered to the lower class, the upper class introduced ‘Vuestra Merced’, a third-person form of address to express respect, which was later abbreviated to usted. This respectful form of address, usted, soon completely replaced vos which had functioned as a neutral term between the intimate tú and the respectful usted (Micheau 1991). However, in the high Middle Ages a specific notion of politeness was developed and used by the members of the court to communicate with one another about their social actions (Ehlich 1992: 94). Thus, the origin of the use of forms of address to encode politeness can be traced back to the notions of respect, affect, and hierarchical status, as these forms emphasized the most appropriate way of behaving at court. In Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, politeness often referred “to strategies for constructing, regulating and reproducing forms of cooperative social interaction, but it also became closely associated with forms of displaying respect, deference, even obedience, and with strategies aimed at currying favour…” (Watts 2003: 34). From this perspective, politeness, that is, displaying deference and consideration for others, was employed as a social strategy and as a means of achieving goals during social interaction. In seventeenth and eighteenth century France, the ideology of politeness was centered in courtly society which enforced codes of good behavior on courtiers (France 1992); in particular, it regarded the courtiers as polished and aesthetically pleasing to society. Under this ideology, politeness was instrumental in establishing a hierarchical and elitist social structure in which social differences were enforced. Thus, historically, politeness or courteous behavior has been conceptualized both as an instrument for emphasizing social differences among civilized people and as a strategy for expressing deference, courtly manners, and consideration for others. It is also common to associate politeness with the norms of etiquette, correct social usage, and deference. In the late Middle Ages the norms of etiquette included public and private behavior, as evidenced by the use of social norms established for weddings and burials, as well as those expected of and used by wellmannered men and women (Haverkate 1994). In fact, interest in rules of etiquette is still evident in our modern society, as can be observed in recent manuals such as “The Metrosexual Guide to Style” (Flocker 2003) which teaches men the social norms of polite or impolite behavior: it is polite to say “excuse me,” “please,” and “thank you” and it is rude to interrupt or speak over others. Descriptions of polite behavior generally include elements of correct use of language, deference, and consideration for others. For instance, the MerriamWebster online Dictionary defines polite behavior as behavior “characterized by correct social usage; [or] marked by an appearance of consideration, tact, [and]

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deference, or courtesy.” Moliner (1979) defines politeness as: Conjunto de reglas mantenidas en el trato social, con las que las personas se muestran entre sí consideración y respeto (‘The set of rules maintained in social dealings by which people demonstrate consideration and respect for each other’). And Corominas (1961) refers to the adjective cortés (‘polite’) as aplicado a las maneras que se adquieren en la corte (‘applying to the manners that are acquired at court’). Overall, it seems that the concept of politeness as understood in our modern times still retains vestiges of the historical notion of politeness dealing with correct social behavior, courtly manners, etiquette, deference, affect, and consideration for others during social interaction.

1.3

The politeness1 vs politeness2 distinction

The notion of politeness has been approached from two angles: first-order politeness (or politeness1) as perceived by members of different sociocultural groups, and second-order politeness (or politeness2) as a theoretical construct or the scientific conceptualization of politeness1 (Eelen 2001; Watts 2003, 2005; Watts, Ide, & Ehlich 1992). Politeness1 refers to the common notion of the term, that is, the way politeness manifests itself in communicative interaction: politeness-aspractice in everyday interaction. Politeness1 comprises three types of politeness: expressive, classificatory, and metapragmatic. Expressive politeness1 refers to politeness encoded in speech reflecting the speaker’s polite intentions and may be realized in the use of specific terms of address, honorifics, conventional formulaic expressions (‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’), and various linguistic devices, such as those employed to mitigate the direct illocutionary force of a request or to reduce the negative effects of a refusal response, the use of the word ‘please’, or the use of the conditional to express politeness in situationally appropriate contexts (Chodorowska-Pilch 2004). Classificatory politeness1 refers to politeness as a categorical tool: it encompasses the hearer’s judgments of other people’s polite or impolite behavior (e.g., calling someone polite or impolite). Finally, metapragmatic politeness1 refers to how people talk about politeness as a concept in everyday interaction, and what people perceive politeness to be in different interactional practices. In general, politeness1 has an evaluative character, involves social norms, and covers different aspects of the lay notion of politeness and how politeness is intentionally encoded in language by the speaker in various communicative practices, as well as how politeness is perceived or evaluated by the hearer. Since linguistic politeness represents one aspect of social interaction, it is recognized as first-order politeness, and has been the focus of empirical work mainly carried out in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics (Eelen 2001; Ide 1993).


In contrast, politeness2 refers to the scientific conceptualization of politeness1 and to a theory of the universal principles governing human interaction. The construction of a theory of politeness2 may help us envision how politeness1 works in social interaction, what its function is in society, how polite behavior is distinguished from impolite behavior and what are the characteristics of (im)polite behavior. In addition, it may help establish the existence of linguistic universals in politeness and provide us with a better understanding of what (im)politeness is and is not during various communicative practices. In general, politeness2 has been presented in various theoretical models that mainly examine politeness as a theoretical construct, as in the universal model of linguistic politeness proposed by Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987). While the models of politeness that attempt to explain polite behavior have mainly focused on politeness2, their definitions occasionally allude to politeness1, especially when they refer to perceived or evaluative notions of polite behavior. Since the controversy of whether the various models of politeness stress a politeness1 or politeness2 orientation has already been addressed in the literature (Eelen 2001; Watts 2003), the objective of the following sections is to provide an overview as well as a critical appraisal of the most influential models of social interaction that attempt to explain the notion of linguistic politeness, face/facework, socially appropriate behavior, and relational work. Because Grice’s theory of meaning represents the foundation of most models of politeness, it will be described first.

1.4

Grice’s cooperative principle and the maxim of politeness

Politeness research has been built on a platform of the principles governing conversational interaction. One of the most important contributions to the study of pragmatics has been Grice’s (1975) theory of meaning whose seminal article “Logic and conversation” was published as part of the William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967 (Grice 1989). This theory describes how people use language and is based on the speaker’s intended meaning as well as the inferential abilities of the interlocutor(s). This British philosopher observed that conversational exchanges consist of cooperative efforts which encompass the speaker’s intention and the hearer’s recognition of that intention (by inference) in specific situations. As a result, he proposed the Cooperative Principle (CP): “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (1975: 45). It has been observed that the CP should be understood to mean ‘operating together’ during the creation of a talk exchange (Arundale 2005).

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In addition, Grice proposed four conversational maxims governing the rules of conversation: 1) quantity: do not make your contribution more informative than is required; 2) quality: do not say what you believe to be false or that for which you lack evidence; 3) relation: be relevant; and, 4) manner: be brief and orderly. For Grice, adhering to the CP and abiding by the maxims represents the normal assumption in the production and interpretation of utterances, namely, that speakers produce and interpret utterances that are satisfactorily informative, true, relevant, and perspicuous. Nevertheless, Grice’s prime interest in the CP and maxims was to understand those situations in which a speaker adheres to the CP, but i) violates one or more maxims outright, ii) explicitly opts out of them, iii) fulfills one maxim only to clash with another, or iv) blatantly flouts or exploits a maxim to lead the hearer to construct an inference or a conversational implicature. A conversational implicature is an inference about “speaker meaning that is both triggered by the speaker’s obvious failure to fulfill one or more of the maxims and constructed by the hearer in order to preserve the assumption that the speaker is nonetheless adhering to the more global CP” (Arundale 2005). Expanding on Grice’s framework, Kallia (2004) proposed a Maxim of Politeness, namely, be appropriately polite in form and content, as well as two submaxims: 1) do not be more polite than expected, and 2) do not be less polite than expected. Similar to Grice’s maxims, Kallia’s Maxim of Politeness can be observed or flouted and may give rise to multiple implicatures. If the maxim is observed, it gives rise to standard implicatures (a weak background message when ‘we follow the rules’); on the other hand, when the maxim is flouted it may give rise to conversational implicatures, expressing positive (politeness) or negative (rudeness) attitudes toward the hearer. Nonetheless, it has been observed that Grice’s framework cannot directly explain why people are often indirect in conveying what they mean (Leech 1983). Also, the universality of Grice’s maxims has been called into question, as not all cultures seem to follow the CP to achieve politeness in communication (cf. Keenan 1976). In general, however, Grice’s maxims specify how participants must behave to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, and cooperative way according to the norms of Western society. As observed by Levinson, in this ideal language model, participants should “speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information” (1983: 102).

. Extensions, revisions, and criticism of Grice’s theory of speaker meaning (neo- and postGricean pragmatics) can be seen in Horn’s recent work (Horn 2005, 2006 and references therein).


Despite these limitations, Grice’s CP and his conversational maxims represent the foundation of most subsequent theoretical and empirical work that attempts to explain politeness phenomena and human interaction. Elaborations of Grice’s model such as making a single Politeness Maxim consonant with the CP have also influenced politeness theory and the extent to which politeness can give rise to multiple implicatures (Fraser 2005; Kallia 2004).

1.5

Face/facework, politeness, and relational work

1.5.1 Goffman’s notion of ‘face’ and facework Goffman’s notions of face and facework are based on a model of social interaction related to his analysis of the rituals that form part of social life. Influenced by the French Sociologist Emile Durkheim (1915), Goffman’s initial ideas on face and facework were originally published in the Journal of Psychiatry (1955) (“On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction”) and 12 years later republished as part of a book comprising six essays (1967). In “On face-work”, Goffman defines face as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes…” (my emphasis) (p. 5). The line a person assumes during social interaction refers to patterns of verbal and nonverbal behavior by which interlocutors negotiate their own views of the situation as well as an evaluation of the participants’ point of view. Goffman refers to good face as being in line with the social behavior of the situation, whereas a person is said to be in wrong face “when information is brought forth in some way about his social worth which cannot be integrated” (p. 8). In other words, a person may be considered out of face when s/he falls out of line during social interaction and does not follow the social behavior expected in a specific situation. Thus, face is the conceptualization we make of our ‘self ’ when actively interacting with others through verbal or non-verbal interaction in the flow of conversation. Face is manifested through the evaluations we make of ourselves through social interaction. According to Goffman, the notion of ‘face’ is always on loan to the interactant and changes from one interaction to another. From his perspective, face changes according to the social expectations of a particular culture. The question of how much face one has to offer during an interaction has to do with the social rules of the group and the particular situation: “it is the rules of the group and the definition of the situation which determine how much feeling one is to have for face and how this feeling is to be distributed among the faces involved” (p. 6). Further, to

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maintain good face during social interaction, interactants must abide by the line expected in a particular situation and negotiate face according to the interlocutors’ intentions and the dynamics of the interaction. Thus, in order to maintain face or be in line during social interaction, interactants may engage in facework, which according to Goffman comprises a repertoire of face-saving practices necessary for the negotiation of face relationships. Further, facework is necessary to counterbalance incidents that occur during the flow of conversation. Goffman defines facework as “the actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face” (1967: 12). It should be noted that the actions taken for the negotiation of face may or may not always be considered polite behavior during social interaction, but rather, certain facework practices may function to maintain the line of conversation. More recently, in his critical review of Goffman’s theory of face, Watts defines facework as “[t]he construction of our own concept of self and the work we do in social interaction to enable others to construct, reproduce and maintain their self-concepts” (2003: 130). In this respect, the strategies employed during the negotiation of face (supportive facework) may consist partly of utterances that are open to polite interpretation. Although Goffman’s notions of face and facework represent the foundation of most models of politeness research and social interaction, at least two main criticisms have been noted in the literature. For instance, it was observed that Goffman’s notion of the ‘ideal social actor’ is that of the Western model interactant, someone who is “obsessively concerned with his own self-image and self-preservation (Bargiela-Chiappini 2003:1963). And second, while for Goffman socialization provides the individuals with rules of scripts for ritual interaction, the social actor should be seen as someone who is “interactionally engaged in sustaining the social order” (Arundale 2006: 198). In summary, facework arises in social interaction through the dynamic coparticipation of (at least) two interlocutors, a speaker and interlocutor(s) (social actors), who are constantly and actively negotiating and renegotiating their intentions based on their past experiences, the relationship between the interlocutors, a given situation, cultural beliefs, and the on-going process of the interaction. The next section shows how the notions of face, facework, and politeness have been incorporated, interpreted, and extended in order to analyze human social interaction.

. For a critical and more elaborate review of Goffman’s model of social interaction and the notion of the ‘social self ’, the reader is referred to Arundale (2006), Bargiela-Chiappini (2003), Eelen (2001), Watts (2003), and Werkhofer (1992).


1.5.2 Lakoff ’s rules of politeness Lakoff (1973) was among the first researchers to adopt Grice’s framework in an attempt to explain a model of politeness from a pragmatic perspective. Despite the fact that this author adopted Grice’s framework, she observed that Grice’s maxims were too general and lacked an explicit explanation of the terms ‘relevance’ and ‘amount of information.’ Instead, Lakoff proposed two universal rules of pragmatic competence: 1) be clear; and 2) be polite. The second rule is comprised of three strategies: do not impose; give options, and be friendly. Following Grice, Lakoff suggested that if one wants to succeed in communication, the message must be conveyed in a clear manner, “so that there’s no mistaking one’s intention” (1973: 296). In her subsequent work, Lakoff defines politeness as “a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (1990: 34). In general, Lakoff ’s notion of politeness is viewed as conversation that is conflictfree with interlocutors being able to satisfy each other’s needs and interests by means of employing politeness strategies that preserve harmony and cohesion during social interaction. To account for cross-cultural differences in a more articulated model of politeness, Lakoff proposes three politeness strategies that are present in social interaction and are subject to cultural variation: distance, deference, and camaraderie. Distance politeness is “equivalent to what most people in our society consider ‘polite’ behavior” (1990: 35) and is characterized by the use of impersonal expressions and non-imposition in European cultures. Deference politeness, representative of Asian cultures, is indecisive or hesitant and “denies the existence of interaction by removing the speaker from the action” (p. 36); this strategy is characterized by offering options to the interlocutor. Finally, camaraderie is representative of informality and intimacy in modern American culture where “the appearance of openness and niceness is to be sought above all else” (p. 39) and interlocutors desire to be seen as friendly. The notion of politeness in Lakoff ’s model is narrowly defined, as it is concerned with respecting the interlocutor’s territory, offering alternatives, and making the interlocutor feel good. It is unclear, however, whether Lakoff ’s notion of polite behavior parallels appropriate behavior, specifically because what is considered appropriate during social interaction (e.g., greetings, leave-takings, and other routine formulae) may not always be interpreted as polite behavior. Finally, while Lakoff ’s view of politeness aims at avoiding friction in interpersonal communication, the author does not provide sufficient empirical evidence for her politeness strategies in cross-cultural contexts, and thus, her claims for the universality of this view are called into question.

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1.5.3 Leech’s politeness principles Leech’s (1983) model of politeness is founded on interpersonal rhetoric and views politeness as conflict avoidance. Leech observes that while the CP, as conceptualized by Grice, enables participants to communicate based on the assumption that the interlocutor is cooperative, it does not explain the degree of politeness expressed during social interaction. Based on the foundation of the CP and its maxims (Gricean pragmatics), Leech proposed the Politeness Principle (PP) as a necessary complement to the CP. The function of the PP is “to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place” (p. 82). The author proposed a second principle, the Irony Principle (IP), which allows the speaker to be impolite, though appearing to be polite, by permitting the hearer to arrive at the offensive point of the speaker’s remark indirectly, by way of implicature. Similar to the CP, the PP is comprised of various maxims: tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy; of these, the tact and generosity maxims apply to commissive acts, such as promises or refusals. According to Leech, his maxims are measured in terms of five pragmatic scales: 1) the ‘cost/ benefit’ scale, which estimates how the action is assessed by the speaker to be costly or beneficial either to the speaker or to the addressee; 2) the ‘optionality’ scale, which describes the degree to which the action is realized as the choice of the addressee; 3) the ‘indirectness’ scale, which describes the length of inference involved in the action; 4) the ‘authority’ scale, which measures the degree of distance with respect to the power or authority that one participant has over another; and, 5) the ‘social distance’ scale, which describes the degree of solidarity between the interlocutors. Leech further suggests that each maxim is comprised of two submaxims; namely, the tact maxim consists of: (a) minimize cost to the other, (b) maximize benefit to the other; or the generosity maxim: (a) minimize benefit to self, (b) maximize cost to self. Although Leech’s model of politeness has made important contributions to politeness theory, his theory and his claims of universality have also been called into question. While this model of politeness has been empirically tested in the Chinese culture (Gu 1990), empirical cross-cultural politeness research is needed in other societies to verify his claims and to better define the notion of politeness. Finally, as observed by numerous scholars, the major problem in Leech’s model is that without an empirical description of politeness phenomena and a more constrained theory, the number of maxims could be extended ad infinitum (Brown & Levinson 1987; Dillon et al. 1985; Eelen 2001; Fraser 1990; Haverkate 1994; Watts 2003).


1.5.4 Brown and Levinson’s universal model of linguistic politeness Brown and Levinson (1978) initially proposed a universal model of linguistic politeness and claimed that politeness is realized linguistically by means of various strategies across cultures. The re-publication of their model nine years later (1987) does not make any changes to their original model of politeness, but includes a 54-page introduction describing current research on linguistic politeness up to its publication. Central to this model of politeness is the concept of ‘face’, derived from Goffman (1967), which Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) define as “the public self-image that every member [of a society] wants to claim for himself ”. The authors recognize that everyone has similar face wants and they distinguish between two aspects of face that they claim to be universal: positive and negative. While positive face refers to the hearer’s desire to be appreciated or approved of (e.g., seeking agreement, solidarity, reciprocity), negative face “represents the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction, i.e., freedom of action and freedom from imposition” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 61) (e.g., being indirect, giving deference, being apologetic). According to Brown and Levinson, face is invested, is something that can be lost, and must be constantly tended to in interaction. Further, Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that during social interaction a speaker must rationally assess the nature of a face-threatening act (FTA). The assessment of the seriousness of an act involves three independent factors that are culture-sensitive: the social distance (D) and social power (P) between a speaker and a hearer, and the absolute ranking (R) of impositions in a particular culture: 1. Social Distance (D) between the speaker and the hearer; in effect, the degree of familiarity or solidarity they share (a symmetric relation); 2. Relative Power (P) of the speaker with respect to the hearer; in effect, the degree to which the speaker can impose his/her will on the hearer (an asymmetric relation); and 3. Absolute Ranking (R) of impositions in the culture in terms of the expenditure of goods and/or services by the hearer, the right of the speaker to perform the act, and the degree to which the hearer welcomes the imposition. The authors suggest that the seriousness for a FTA may be calculated using the following formula: Wx = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + Rx. According to this formula, Wx represents a value that measures the weightiness of a FTA, D(S,H) measures the degree of social distance between the speaker and hearer, P(H,S) measures the value of power that a hearer has over a speaker, and Rx is the value that measures the degree of imposition of a FTA in a particular culture. As observed by Brown

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Figure 1. Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson 1987: 69)

and Levinson, each of these values is measured from 1 to n, where n is some small number. In general, according to these authors, the social dimensions of P, D, and R represent the seriousness of a FTA and thus determine the degree of politeness in social interaction. Once the degree of the FTA has been assessed, the speaker must select from a set of five strategies which allow him to avoid or to minimize a FTA (1987: 69). This is schematized below in Figure 1. As seen in Figure 1, these strategies are based on a hierarchy of binary choices and are ordered with respect to the degree of politeness involved: First, the speaker has to decide whether or not to commit the FTA; if he decides to do so, then he must decide to do it either on record or off record (e.g., irony, understatement, rhetorical questions). If the decision is to go on record, the speaker must perform the act with or without redressive action (e.g., ‘turn off the light, please’ vs. ‘turn off the light’). Finally, if the speaker chooses to perform an FTA with redressive action, he/she must do it using positive or negative politeness strategies (e.g., ‘Nicky, honey, turn off the light’ vs. ‘Could you please turn off the light?’). Overall, for Brown and Levinson, linguistic politeness is viewed as a means of conflict avoidance and in their framework the emphasis is placed on the speaker, not on the hearer, as an independent member of a society (i.e., negative politeness).

Criticisms of Brown & Levinson: Cultural considerations and the notion of ‘face’ The main criticism of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness arises from the fact that this model of social interaction is individualistic and subscribes to the notion of a speaker as a rational agent “who is, during the initial phase of generating an utterance at least, unconstrained by social considerations and thus free to choose egocentric, asocial and aggressive intentions” (Werkhofer 1992: 156). Consequently, this model speaker cannot represent the politeness behavior of


non-Western cultures, in which a group rather than an individual orientation is the behavioral norm. For example, through an examination of the norms of interaction in Igbo society, Nwoye was among the first researchers to draw the distinction between individual and group face, emphasizing that group face conforms to the “culturally expected norms of behavior that are institutionalized and sanctioned by society” (1992: 313). Similarly, interlocutors in the Japanese culture are sensitive to the social context and are concerned with the rules established by the social group. The notion of face in the Japanese culture, however, is conceptualized as social relativism, or collectivism, where social interaction comprises concerns of dependency, empathy, and reciprocity (Lebra 1976). Similarly, Matsumoto (1988) observed that in the Japanese culture the individual’s self-image does not exist independently but “as a group member having certain relations to others” (p. 423). In his study of politeness phenomena in modern Chinese, Gu noted that politeness “is a phenomenon belonging to the level of society, which endorses its normative constraints on each individual” (1990: 242). The author points out that in Chinese, the issuance of an invitation, for example, is considered a polite action, even if the invitee declines the invitation. Consequently, inviting, under normal social circumstances, is not considered as a threat to the hearer’s negative face. Likewise, Mao (1994) found that in the Chinese culture the components of face include the respect of the group and the reputation that one person attributes to others. These researchers rightly noted that Brown and Levinson’s division of positive and negative face is not appropriate in those cultures in which the individual is less significant than the social group with which s/he is affiliated. Overall, Kasper (1990) pointed out that “given the collective rather than individualistic orientation of Japanese culture, negative face seems negligible and cannot account for politeness behavior” (1990: 195). Brown and Levinson’s notion of politeness strategies used for the negotiation of face have also been called into question. According to Goffman’s original notion of facework (1967), the linguistic strategies used during social interaction may not necessarily constitute polite behavior. Linguistic or non-linguistic strategies may be used to maintain the line in a particular social interaction and these strategies may not be interpreted as polite behavior by the interlocutor. Linguistic or non-linguistic strategies are part of the negotiation of facework in social interaction. In this respect, supportive facework may be positive or negative (Watts 2003) and the selection of positive or negative supportive strategies to express facework depends on the particular situation and the social rules of the group. In addition, it is well known that utterances are not inherently polite or impolite, but rather, “[w]hat is ‘polite’ or ‘impolite’ language can only be assessed as such by analyzing the context of real social practice” (Watts 2003: 141). Thus, instead of

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20 Politeness in Mexico and the United States

Brown and Levinson’s label ‘politeness strategies,’ the term ‘pragmatic strategies’ may be more appropriate to describe the expressions used during the negotiation of face in social interaction. And as mentioned above, some of these strategies may be open to a polite or an impolite interpretation on the part of the hearer. Moreover, Brown and Levinson suggest that the three independent and culturally-sensitive variables (i.e., social distance, relative power, and ranking of imposition) are present in all cultures, as though all speakers come from one speech community and share the same cultural values. However, none of these variables can be taken as a constant between individuals because relative power and responsibilities can change even within short periods of time (Fraser 1990). Instead, power and social distance should be understood as relative notions which are constantly changing and must be interpreted in accordance with the context of a specific situation. In particular, the degree of social distance between the interlocutors and the situation need to be considered carefully, especially since it has been empirically shown that the situation influences the degree of deference (Zimin 1981). Thus, the selection of both the linguistic and non-linguistic strategies employed during the negotiation of face depends on the particular speech act and the sociocultural context, that is, the specification of social variables and the definition of the situation (Lavandera 1988). Further, empirical research on Spanish politeness has re-examined the notion of face, as originally described in Brown and Levinson, and has shown that linguistic politeness is realized differently according to the cultural values to which the group ascribes. For example, using colloquial conversations in Peninsular Spanish among relatives and friends, Hernández-Flores (1999) observed that unsolicited advice in her interactions was realized in the form of clear assertions and was not interpreted as a FTA by the members of the group. She argued that the sociocultural values of self-affirmation (the desire to be seen by others as someone with good social qualities) and confianza (sense of deep familiarity), are two components of the social ideology of Spaniards in colloquial interactions, which represent, in turn, the interlocutors’ need for autonomy and affiliation (Bravo 1999; Fant 1989). In another study using telephone conversations, Placencia (1996) showed that deference, realized by strategic lexical choices, is an important sociocultural value present in the notion of face in Ecuador. This author states that in Ecuadorian society, deference is not due to the desire to protect one’s individuality or territory (i.e., negative politeness as in Brown and Levinson), but rather to “conform to the social norms of the group ….and dictate respect to the elderly and parents” (Placencia 1996: 21). Finally, some societies in the Spanish-speaking world appear to have more of an orientation towards positive politeness or expressing involvement towards the interlocutor (Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, and Uruguay) and in others both


positive and negative politeness appear to have equal importance (Ecuador, Peru) (Márquez Reiter & Placencia 2005). However, the notion of linguistic politeness in interpersonal relationships in Mexico has received little systematic attention (e.g., Covarrubias 2002; Curcó 1998; Curcó & De Fina 2002; W. García 1996) and, as a result, the notion of face needs to be examined further in this context. In her analysis of the interpersonal relationships in a Mexican company in Veracruz, Mexico, Covarrubias (2002) proposed two codes of communication: the code of respeto (‘respect’) and the code of confianza (familiarity). These codes will be further examined in the present study to explain how each contributes to polite or socially appropriate behavior during social interaction. Overall, this book seeks to contribute to the dialogue on how politeness is realized in different cultures by analyzing the realization patterns of refusals in Mexican Spanish and American English when refusing a person of equal or higher status in specific situations.

1.5.5 Fraser’s conversational contract Fraser (1978) and Fraser and Nolen (1981) presented yet a different perspective, later further developped in Fraser (1990), namely, presenting the notion of politeness as a Conversational Contract (CC). While these authors recognized the importance of Goffman’s (1967) notion of face and deference in the CC, their perspective on politeness differs from that of Brown and Levinson (1987). Adopting Grice’s (1975) CP, Fraser’s view of politeness involves an implicit understanding of the rules governing social interaction between cooperative interlocutors. He states: upon entering into a given conversation, each party brings an understanding of some initial set of rights and obligations that will determine, at least for the preliminary stages, what the participants can expect from the other(s). During the course of time, or because of a change in the context, there is always the possibility for a renegotiation of the conversational contract: the two parties may readjust just what rights and what obligations they hold towards each other. (1990: 232)

The rights and obligations that interactive participants bring into a conversation vary to a great extent. This set of terms may be conventionally determined by a particular situation, or specified by previous conversations and an awareness of the situation (Fraser & Nolen 1981). Based on these rights and obligations, interactants know how to behave appropriately and what to expect during a conversation. They know, for instance, when they are expected to take turns, when they are not, when and how much to speak, and when to remain silent. Also, according to established social parameters (i.e., status, power, the role of each speaker, and the

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nature of the circumstances), participants know what to say and how to address the interlocutor appropriately; their messages are determined based on both the force and content of their intended actions. Most importantly, since the rights and obligations seem to be “highly culturally determined” (Fraser 1978: 10), speech act patterns and degrees of politeness are expected to differ cross-culturally. Thus, if competent interactants respect the terms and conditions of the CC during social interaction, they are considered to be polite. Negotiation is a crucial component of the CC. In order to maintain balance in conversation and being aware of their rights and obligations, participants may renegotiate their intentions as long as they abide by the terms of the CC. Under this view, politeness is anticipated and is something that develops throughout conversation. As observed by Fraser, politeness does not “involve making the hearer ‘feel good’, as in Lakoff or Leech, nor with making the hearer ‘feel bad’, as in Brown and Levinson’s model. It simply involves getting on with the task at hand in light of the terms and conditions of the CC” (1990: 233). Based on the social norms of a particular culture, cooperative participants are polite when they abide by the CC under particular circumstances, and impolite when they violate the rights and obligations of the CC. Although this view of politeness assumes that if interactants abide by the rules of the CC they are considered polite, it seems that not all of the facework practices or the linguistic expressions used during the negotiation of face will be considered polite. For example, using terms of address in situations of unequal status and distant relationship (+P, +D) may indicate deference or certain degrees of formality between the interlocutors, and not necessarily convey politeness at all times. In addition, other researchers have sought to clarify certain aspects of the CC, for example, “what is the nature of those rights and obligations and under what social conditions may they be renegotiated?” (Watts 2003: 81). Furthermore, the notion of appropriate behavior needs to be better explained in order to include other aspects of social interaction such as (in)directness or impolite or rude behavior. Under this view, the rules and obligations of the CC seem to represent appropriate or unmarked behavior, and polite behavior is viewed as a subset of the CC, but polite behavior is not clearly specified. Consequently, it appears that in order to determine the validity of Fraser’s politeness model, the relationship between politeness and deference needs to be empirically tested in a cross-cultural context to determine under what conditions politeness and mitigation converge, and under what circumstances they should be considered different concepts. More specifically, does the repertoire of linguistic and nonlinguistic strategies used during the CC always encode politeness or facework? Despite the limitations outlined herein, due to its importance in recent politeness theory, the CC has been considered “the most global perspective on


politeness” (Kasper 1994: 3207), and has been utilized to account for politeness phenomena in non-Western cultures (Nwoye 1992).

1.5.6 Arndt and Janneys’ supportive facework and interpersonal politeness From another perspective grounded in psychological research, Arndt and Janney view politeness as emotive communication and interpersonal politeness (1985, 1991). Emotive communication refers to transitory attitudes, feelings and other affective states. According to these authors, all practices of emotive communication involve verbal (linguistic expressions used in communication), vocal (choices in pitch direction, loudness), and kinesic activities (eye contact, gaze, body posture, laughter, smile) (1985: 282). In addition, they consider three basic emotive dimensions of speech: confidence cues, positive-negative affect cues, and intensity cues. Confidence cues refer to the degree of (in)directness or certainty to which an interlocutor approaches or avoids a topic in the presence of another interlocutor, and confidence may be expressed or reinforced verbally, vocally, or kinesically. Positive or negative affect cues refer to the verbal, vocal, or kinesic activities employed to support interpersonal communication by means of supporting (positive support) or contradicting (negative support) the interlocutor’s point of view. Overall, the dimensions of emotive speech allow interlocutors to maintain the flow of communication during social interaction. Arndt and Janney’s notion of interpersonal politeness is based on Goffman’s (1967) notion of face, and following Brown and Levinson’s dichotomy of positive and negative face, Arndt and Janney suggest that while negative face is rooted on personal autonomy, positive face is oriented towards interpersonal support (1985: 293). The central component of their model of interpersonal politeness emphasizes four main supportive strategies for the negotiation of facework. These strategies may be realized by means of linguistic expressions or non-verbal messages such as vocal or kinesic signals: 1) Supportive positive messages (e.g., positive affect, involvement, confidence cues, directness); 2) nonsupportive positive messages (e.g., low confidence and involvement cues, indirectness, vagueness); 3) supportive negative messages (e.g., low personal and involvement cues, but high interpersonal involvement cues, and negative verbal cues which are contradicted by positive nonverbal behavior); and, 4) nonsupportive negative messages (e.g., confidence cues, negative affect cues, involvement cues, directness). Overall, according to this perspective, politeness is viewed as interpersonal supportiveness and consists of supportive facework strategies that express positive or negative feelings without threatening the interlocutor emotionally.

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In general, the contribution of Arndt and Janney’s politeness model to politeness theory is important because interpersonal communication may be mediated by means of positive and negative supportive strategies necessary for the negotiation of facework in social interaction. Unlike Brown and Levinson’s and Fraser’s notions of politeness, Arndt and Janney’s interpersonal politeness model includes strategies that may encode politeness by means of both linguistic and non-linguistic cues. Non-verbal aspects of interpersonal politeness such as vocal or kinesic activities are beyond the scope of this investigation and will not be treated in this work. Overall, as attractive as this politeness model may seem, there is still a need for cross-cultural politeness research to test this model, and the system of linguistic and non-linguistic supportive strategies necessary for the negotiation of face relationships needs to be more clearly articulated.

1.5.7 Spencer-Oatey’s view of rapport management Another model of politeness advanced by Spencey-Oatey (2000) frames politeness as rapport management, that is, the management of harmony-disharmony during social interaction. Her framework comprises elements from previous views on politeness such as Goffman’s (1967) notion of face, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) positive face, Leech’s (1983) pragmatic scale of cost-benefit, and to some extent Fraser’s (1990) notion of the conversational contract. Spencer-Oatey’s framework of rapport management consists of two components: the management of face (i.e., face needs) and the management of sociality rights (i.e., social expectancies). The first component, the management of face, has two interrelated aspects: quality of face and identity of face. The first refers to the desire for people to evaluate us positively (i.e., Brown & Levinson’s positive face) according to our personal qualities (i.e., competence, appearance); the second refers to the desire for people to acknowledge our social identities and roles as, for example, a group leader or close friend. The second component of rapport management, sociality rights, also has two interrelated aspects: equity rights and association rights. The first refers to our belief that we are entitled to be treated fairly and includes two components: the notion that costs and benefits should be kept in balance between the interlocutors (Leech’s cost-benefit scale) and the extent to which people control or impose on us (autonomy-imposition). The second, association rights, refers to our belief that we are entitled to be associated with others to maintain a harmonious relationship and includes two elements: the first refers to the degree of our involvement with others (interactional association-dissociation); the second aspect refers to the degree that we share our beliefs, interests and concerns with others (affective


association-dissociation). Overall, in this framework what counts as an appropriate amount of conversation and what to say in a given context depends on the nature of the relationship and the interlocutors’ expectations prior to and during the negotiation of face (i.e., Fraser’s conversational contract). In sum, Spencer-Oatey’s framework of rapport management provides an alternative for analyzing sociocultural behavior in social interaction. This view excludes Brown and Levinson’s original notion of negative face in which the individual is seen as an independent member of society; instead, group identity captures the notion of an individual who desires to be perceived as a member of the group. The notion of association rights refers to social interaction as appropriate behavior and rapport management that is co-constructed by both interlocutors according to the sociocultural expectations of the culture and the interlocutors’ unmarked set of assumptions. Spencer-Oatey’s classification of pragmalinguistic forms for realizing various speech acts represents an effort to analyze how interlocutors carry out rapport. Despite its breadth in theoretical description, this framework has not been widely adopted as a model for analyzing language in social interaction in cross-cultural situations (e.g., Spencer-Oatey & Xing 2003).

1.5.8 Ide’s typology of linguistic politeness: Discernment and volition In reaction to the Eurocentric view expressed in Brown and Levinson’s universal notion of politeness, Ide observed that there are societies, such as those in Asia (e.g., Japan, China, Korea), in which the appropriate levels of politeness rely on formal linguistic features of the social interaction being enacted, and as a result, she proposed two types of linguistic politeness: discernment and volition. Discernment is realized by “the choice of linguistic forms or expressions in which the distinction between the ranks or the roles of the speaker, the referent and the addressee, are systematically encoded” (1989: 230). Unlike Brown and Levinson (1987) who treat formal forms (e.g., honorifics) as negative politeness strategies, Ide made a distinction between formal forms and verbal strategies. Formal forms are 1) limited in choice (e.g., honorifics, pronouns, address terms, speech formulas); 2) socio-pragmatically obligatory (e.g., Japanese society requires the use of specific formal forms to be polite when addressing a person of higher status, such as a professor); 3) grammatically obligatory (e.g., the choice of pronouns V or T; address terms); and, 4) made in accordance with the referent and/or the speaker in a particular situation. On the other hand, volition is realized mainly by verbal strategies which are oriented toward the addressee. Volition represents the individualistic aspect of

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politeness and “allows the speaker a considerably more active choice, according to the speaker’s intention, from a relatively wider range of possibilities” (Hill et al. 1986: 348). Thus, although both types of politeness result in smooth communication, with discernment the speaker’s focus lies on the socially prescribed norm, whereas with volition the speaker’s focus is on his/her own intention. Recently, Ide has argued that ritualistic (formal) forms contribute to linguistic politeness. The choice of the appropriate formal forms of addres (pragmalinguistic knowledge) employed in a specific situation (sociopragmatic knowledge) may convey politeness to the interlocutor. For example, the use of pronouns of address or address terms (‘professor,’ ‘sir’) may encode linguistic politeness “because the fitting of the proper linguistic forms to the contextual factors makes the interactants feel secure in the interaction and the situation” (Ide 2005: 61). Most importantly, according to Ide, the use of honorifics indexes 1) the appropriate relationship between the speaker and the hearer; 2) the formality of the situation; and, 3) the speaker’s identity (2005: 61). Overall, if honorifics or pronouns of address are used appropriately in a particular situation, that is, according to the social norms of a given culture, a person may be perceived as being polite. Although Ide’s model of linguistic politeness was originally proposed for Asian cultures with dense honorific systems (e.g., Japanese), the extent to which formal forms of address convey politeness in Mexican Spanish, a culture that uses specific forms of address to index distance and respect, remains to be investigated.

1.5.9 Haverkate’s typology of politeness strategies: Functional and formal categories Using functional and formal categories of politeness, Haverkate (1988) proposes a typology of politeness strategies in communicative interaction. According to this view, functional categories operate at the socio-cultural level in which cultural norms and values regulate communicative and metacommunicative interaction. The former, communicative interaction, includes the observance of conversational maxims (Phatic Maxim, don’t interrupt) often used to break silence, and the rules of discourse etiquette, whereas the latter, metacommunicative interaction, comprises polite (e.g., thanking) and non-polite (e.g., assertives, directives) speech acts that are shown to have culture-specific properties. In contrast, formal categories operate at the pragmalinguistic level and are based on the componential analysis of the speech act. At this level, politeness strategies are analyzed according to the articulation of a speech act (e.g., prosody), the illocutionary act at the macro- (e.g., pre-post sequences) and micro- (e.g., a refusal head act) levels,


the selection of particular lexical items to enact politeness (e.g., diminutives), and the referential categories of politeness such as polite pronouns or focalizing expressions that convey deference politeness. In general, Haverkate’s typology of linguistic politeness universals should be understood in the realm of cross-cultural communication and according to culture-specific properties that regulate cultural norms and values. Since the current investigation is concerned with the realization of linguistic politeness in Mexico and the United States, the linguistic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals are not viewed as inherently polite or impolite; rather, it is the context, the situation, the relationship between the interlocutors, and the intended message that may contribute to the interpretation of a polite or an impolite utterance. With regard to the pragmalinguistic analysis of a speech act, in this book I am concerned with the analysis of the entire refusal sequence on both the macro(pre- and post-sequences) and micro- (internal modification) levels. Although Haverkate’s typology has been empirically validated in Peninsular Spanish and British English, the present investigation examines the cross-cultural realization patterns of refusals in a variety of Spanish that has not been widely investigated to date, Mexican Spanish, and contrasts those patterns with U.S. English. Finally, despite its importance in face-to-face interaction, an analysis of the prosodic features (e.g., stress, syllable lengthening, pitch) observed in a refusal response lies beyond the scope of the present study.

1.5.10 Scollon & Scollon’s intercultural communication and face systems Scollon and Scollon (2001) propose a model of social interaction to analyze the negotiation of face relationships in intercultural communication. In order to avoid the confusion that might result from the use of the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, Scollon and Scollon (2001) examine the notion of face by taking into account individual and group needs. As observed by these authors, the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ “can easily be forgotten and readers can too easily begin to think of ‘positive politeness’ as good and ‘negative politeness’ as bad” (2001: 47). Instead, these authors adopt the term involvement as a way of reminding us that the emphasis is on the common ground, highlighting the “person’s right and need to be considered a normal, contributing, or supporting member of society” (2001: 46). Involvement is realized by such discourse strategies as paying attention to others, claiming in-group membership, using first names, or to show that the speaker is closely connected to the hearer. On the other hand, they use the term independence to emphasize the individuality of the participants. Independence is shown by such discourse strategies as making minimal assumptions, using formal names

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and titles, or by giving options to the interlocutor. According to the authors neither of these aspects face, involvement and independence, should be considered as absolute expressions; instead, in any communication both aspects of face must be projected simultaneously to show the appropriate degree of involvement or independence toward the interlocutor. For Scollon and Scollon, face relationships consist of two elements: the unmarked set of initial assumptions shared by the interlocutors and a series of negotiations. These elements are crucial prior to and during the negotiation of face. Face relationships are described using three face systems (deference, solidarity, hierarchy) and in accordance with three social factors (distance [D], power [P], and weight of imposition [W]). In a deference face system, the interlocutors see themselves at the same social level with no interlocutor exerting social power over the other (–Power), but with a distant relationship (+D). As a result, both interlocutors may use independence strategies that include expressions that minimize threat to avoid the risk of losing face. In a solidarity face system, interlocutors see themselves as being of equal social position (–Power) and with a close relationship (–D); in this system, the interlocutors use involvement strategies to assume or express reciprocity or to claim a common point of view. Finally, in a hierarchical face system, one participant is in a superordinate position (+P) and the other is in a subordinate position (–P). In this asymmetric system, where the relationship may be close (+D) or distant (–D), Scollon and Scollon observe that while the participant with power may use involvement strategies, the participant in a lower position may employ independence strategies to minimize threat or to show respect to the interlocutor. Overall, the independence aspect of face shows that “a person may act with some degree of autonomy and that he or she respects the rights of others to their own autonomy” (Scollon & Scollon 2001: 47). In general, Scollon and Scollon’s model offers an alternative for examining cross-cultural communication taking into account the face needs of each group. In particular, since the current study analyzes the realization patterns of refusals in situations of equal and unequal status, Scollon and Scollon’s face systems are instrumental for analyzing the negotiation of face in symmetric (–P) and asymmetric (+P) systems. Most importantly, the primacy of involvement or independence in Mexican and American societies is subject to the cultural expectations of the members of each society. Thus, due to the cross-cultural approach adopted in this book, Scollon and Scollon’s face systems and both aspects of face, involvement and independence, will be used to examine the negotiation of a refusal in Mexican Spanish and American (U.S.) English.


1.5.11 Watts’ politic behavior and relational work Watts’ view of polite behavior is embedded within a larger notion of social interaction and facework. His model of social interaction captures the spectrum of verbal and non-verbal behavior in the use of the term ‘politic behavior’ (1989, 1992, 2003). Using a discursive approach, Watts defines politic behavior as “that behavior, linguistic and non-linguistic, which the participants construct as being appropriate to the ongoing social interaction. The construction may have been made prior to entering the interaction, but is always negotiable during the interaction, despite the expectations that participants might bring to it” (2003: 20). Crucial to the understanding of politic behavior is the notion of the habitus. According to Bourdieu’s (1990) Theory of Practice, the habitus encompasses “the set of predispositions to act in certain ways, which generates cognitive and bodily practices in the individual. The set of dispositions is acquired through socialization” (Watts 2003: 149). For Watts, polite behavior is “beyond what is perceived to be appropriate to the ongoing social interaction” (2003: 21), whereas impolite behavior is behavior that is considered inappropriate by the interactants. In this respect, polite behavior is seen as the surplus of politic behavior in a specific situation. It should be noted that, in general, the linguistic expressions employed during the negotiation of face are not inherently polite or impolite, but rather, may be open to interpretation in a particular context. After a critical evaluation of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model, Watts concludes that Goffman’s (1967) original notions of face, facework, and lines of behavior are more suitable for a theory of social interaction. Following Goffman (1967), Watts defines face as “a socially attributed aspect of self that is temporarily on loan for the duration of the interaction in accordance with the line or lines that the individual has adopted” (2003: 125). In this respect, face is the condition for interaction and facework serves to maintain the appropriate line of behavior during social interaction. It should be observed that while linguistic politeness may be part of politic behavior, it by no means represents the core of politic behavior. Finally, under Watts’ framework, facework is carried out by means of supportive or non-supportive strategies which may constitute positive or negative facework in social interaction. While facework may be accomplished by means of linguistic or non-linguistic strategies, Watts’ model of politic behavior focuses on linguistic politeness. Overall, Watts’ model of politic behavior should be seen as a “contribution to the overall study of human social interaction and the significance of language in that interaction” (2003: 262). This model represents a crucial contribution to face and politeness theory because it views social behavior as the negotiation of facework, of which polite behavior is only one part. However, the notions of poli-

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tic and polite behavior need to be validated cross-culturally. For example, it is necessary to develop an inventory of the linguistic strategies employed during the negotiation of a refusal in order to determine the extent to which supportive and non-supportive facework varies cross-culturally between the Mexican and American societies. In accordance with Locher (2004, 2006), Locher and Watts (2005) and Watts (2005) situate polite behavior within a more restrictive view of social interaction: relational work. Locher and Watts argue that Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory is not a model of politeness, but rather a model of facework that describes social interaction related to mitigation of face threatening acts, and Brown and Levinson’s model cannot explain impolite or inappropriate behavior. Thus, in accordance with Locher and Watts (2005), Watts (2005) proposes a broader view of facework that goes beyond polite or appropriate behavior that is more suitable for explaining social interaction, namely, relational work (Figure 2). According to Watts, relational work refers to the interactional negotiation of face relationships; it encompasses various aspects of social interaction such as (in)direct, (im)polite, or (in)appropriate behavior. Two concepts are important for the structuring and emergence of social norms as realizations of relational work: Bourdieu’s habitus described above and the notion of frame as described by Tannen: “structures of expectation based on past experience” (1993: 53). Figure 2 shows an effort to illustrate the spectrum of relational work.

Figure 2. Relational work (Watts 2005: xliii)


As shown in Figure 2, relational work is comprised of a continuum which ranges from politic (or appropriate) behavior to non-politic (inappropriate) behavior. The dotted line that separates the unmarked politic behavior from positively marked behavior (polite behavior) should not be taken as discrete categories of one or the other; but rather, both types of behavior should be seen as existing on a continuum of politic to polite behavior where each type of behavior may overlap under specific contextual conditions. It should be noted that the perceptions of polite or impolite behavior may vary from culture to culture, within each culture (regional variation), and from speaker to speaker. This variation depends on social, situational, and contextual variables. As illustrated in Figure 2, a great deal of work that occurs during relational work goes unnoticed. Positively marked behavior may be open to a polite interpretation, whereas negatively marked behavior may be perceived as rude or impolite. Overall, under this broad conceptualization of social interaction, positively marked behavior (polite behavior) is considered a subset of relational work, that is, excessive behavior that may be perceived by the interlocutors as polite behavior. The notion of relational work has been previously conceptualized by other scholars as appropriate and interactive behavior. For example, instead of using the term politeness, Meier refers to socially appropriate language behavior or repair work that is employed during social interaction to construct social discourse (1995a, 1995b). For Brown, face “is indisputably interactionally created and manipulated” (2001: 11623). Following Goffman’s original notion of self-presentation, Bargiela-Chiappini conceptualizes facework as “the self-presentation in social encounters which is dynamically realised in the interactional order” (2003: 1464). Likewise, for Arundale (2006) face is viewed as both a relational and an interactional achievement that is co-constructed by the interlocutors in social communication, and Spencer-Oatey (2007) uses relational to refer to the relationship between the participants and the ways in which the relationship is negotiated (or managed) through social interaction.

1.5.12 The current study: Face, relational work, and polite behavior The focus of this empirical study is on the realization and the perception of refusals in one variety of Mexican Spanish and in one variety of American (U.S) English from a cross-cultural perspective. As mentioned previously, the speech act of refusals was selected for this study because it represents an interactive speech act in which the person refusing has to negotiate a successful resolution with an interlocutor by means of linguistic and non-verbal strategies. A refusal is co-constructed by both participants, is realized across the interaction, and requires the

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participants’ efforts to negotiate face when refusing a person of equal or unequal status. In this book, I am primarily concerned with two aspects of politeness1: expressive politeness1 (negotiation of face relationships), that is, linguistic expressions employed by a speaker to negotiate face (these expressions may be open to a polite interpretation in specific situations); and, metapragmatic politeness1, namely, what people perceive politeness to be in different interactional practices (perceptions of politeness). Following Goffman (1967), I use the term face as the conceptualization we make of our ‘self ’ when actively interacting with others, through verbal or nonverbal talk exchanges in the on-going flow of conversation. Further, face is manifested through the evaluations or perceptions each of us make of ourselves and others through the dynamics of social interaction. During the negotiation of a refusal, for example, the negotiation of face relationships includes relating to and interacting with others. Although the prime focus of this study is the analysis of the linguistic strategies employed by the person refusing, the initiating act and the negotiation of the refusal on the part of the interlocutor (i.e., the interlocutor’s uptake) are also examined. In this respect, face is both relational and interactional (Arundale 2006) and is managed or negotiated in social interaction (SpencerOatey 2007). As stated in the introduction, since this book analyzes social interaction in two cultures in both symmetric (–Power) and asymmetric (+Power) situations, I will adopt Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) face systems (hierarchical [+Power], deference [+Distance], solidarity [–Distance]) as well as both aspects of face (involvement, independence). This model of interpersonal communication was selected to examine social interaction because it offers the opportunity to contrast both aspects of face in two different countries, whose cultures are generally oriented towars independence (the United States) or torwards involvement (Mexico). Although both aspects of face are present during social interaction in every culture, the current study will illustrate that among Mexicans and Americans either involvement or independence will predominate. My understanding of relational work is partially in line with Locher (2004, 2006), Locher and Watts (2005), and Watts (2005) in that relational work comprises the entire continuum of verbal behavior from direct, impolite or rude, or aggressive behavior to polite behavior. For these authors, polite behavior (politic behavior in excess) represents one small part of relational work. My use of the term ‘relational work’ refers to the work interlocutors engage in during the course of dynamic social interaction when negotiating and renegotiating their intentions with others in specific situations and according to the cultural values of a given society. The amount of relational work realized during the flow of conversation may depend on the following elements: the participants’ previous experience, the


relationship between them (equal-unequal, close-distant), the dynamics of the specific situation such as the setting and background of the speech event, as well as gender and age differences between the participants (male-male, female-female, male-female interactions). Thus, relational work refers to the appropriate social behavior that is negotiated/renegotiated and interactionally achieved (Arundale 2006) by at least two interlocutors during active social interaction. Furthermore, in this sense, relational work belongs to the interpersonal function of language (Halliday 1978) which specifies the role relationships of the participants in a particular situation and whose forms of interaction are achieved through the construction of meaning. Finally, I view polite behavior as a social phenomenon that manifests itself through communicative and non-communicative actions between at least two interlocutors that engage in relational work to negotiate and renegotiate their intentions during the course of social interaction. During the negotiation of face, participants communicate their intentions by relating to others (relational) and reciprocating to the speaker (interactive). One aspect of relational work that describes social behavior in excess (i.e., positively marked behavior) is linguistic politeness, which will be the focus of this contrastive analysis. While socially appropriate behavior may go unnoticed at times, polite behavior is perceived as over-appropriate, context-dependent, and as a set of marked assumptions and shared expectations between the interlocutors (Watts 2003). In this sense, polite behavior expresses interpersonal meaning (speaker’s and interlocutor’s attitudes and evaluations) through the ‘extra’ social behavior that is perceived as polite on the part of the interlocutor during the negotiation of face. Overall, in the current study, it is assumed that relational work and linguistic politeness may co-occur during the negotiation of a refusal because interlocutors may wish to soften the negative effects of a direct refusal in an attempt to protect both the speaker’s and the addressee’s face.

1.6

Concluding remarks

In this section, I reviewed central notions that have contributed to our understanding of social interaction and politeness such as face, facework, and Grice’s theory of meaning. After stating the differences between politeness1 and politeness2, I reviewed different theoretical frameweorks that have been proposed to examine socially appropriate and polite behavior. Although the politeness1-politeness2 distinction seems to be present in every model of politeness described above, each model shows a strong preference for one or the other. For example, Brown and Levinson’s universal of model linguistic

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politeness can be seen to reflect politeness2, the scientific conceptualization of politeness. However, there are also references to politeness1, for example in the allusion to ‘participant’s face’, that is, “the kernel element in folk notions of politeness” (1987: 57). This observation also applies to Leech’s (1983) and Fraser and Nolen’s (1981) models which indirectly claim a politeness2 orientation, but allude to various aspects of politeness1, as they make claims of empirical validity. On the other hand, other models that have carried out experimental research with respect to commonsense notions of politeness indirectly claim to have a politeness1 inclination (Arndt & Janney 1985, 1991; Haverkate 1988; Ide 1989; Meier 1995a; Lakoff 1990; Scollon & Scollon 2001; Spencer-Oatey 2007), but at times refer to theoretical aspects of politeness2. Locher (2006) and Locher and Watts (2005) claim a politeness1 orientation which is empirically validated with conversational English data, although Watts (2003) mentions some aspects of politeness2 (i.e., politic behavior). Thus, it appears that every theory that attempts to examine politeness in social interaction incorporates aspects of both politeness1 or politeness2, but often one predominates. At the close of this chapter, I set forth my understanding of the notions of face, relational work, and polite behavior which I will use to explain the results of this study with regard to the negotiation and the perception of refusals in symmetric and asymmetric situations in Mexican and American societies. In the next chapter, I review and discuss the literature in speech act theory and discuss an approach for examining speech acts at the discourse level (speech act sequences). Since speech acts occur in context rather than in isolation, I discuss the role of this important factor in speech act realization. Then, 51 studies on refusals are described in light of the methods employed for collecting pragmatic data among native speakers of different languages.

chapter 2

Speech acts in context Refusals

2.1

Introduction

The previous chapter described and discussed the most influential models of politeness employed to analyze social interaction. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the framework employed here to analyze the realization patterns of refusals in Mexican Spanish and U.S. English is a modified version of the notion of relational work and polite behavior (Locher 2006; Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2005). In addition, Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) symmetric and asymmetric face systems will be used to analyze the cross-cultural data in equal and unequal situations. This chapter provides an account of speech acts in context in relation to refusals. It begins by laying the foundation of the main contributions of speech act theory (2.2) and provides an approach for examining speech acts at the discourse level (2.3), followed by an analysis of the internal modification of refusal sequences that serve to weaken or mitigate a refusal response (2.3.1). Since speech acts are interpreted in context, the concept of context is discussed in light of speech act theory and social interaction approaches (2.4). Next, the speech act of refusals, the focus of this investigation, is described (2.5), followed by an overview of the empirical studies to date on refusals and the methods employed for collecting refusal data (2.5.1). This section ends with a brief discussion of a few studies on English and Spanish refusals (2.5.2), followed by concluding remarks (2.6).

2.2

Speech act theory

In contemporary philosophical thinking, the inception of speech act theory is generally traced back to the notions of force and language use in context. Frege (1918/1977) recognized that sentences contain expressions whose meaning serves to verify the force of their utterances; for example, he observed that a declarative sentence may carry the force of an assertion. Similarly, in his Philosophical Investi-

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gations, Wittgenstein (1953/1957) observed that the concept of meaning is related to the way language functions in communication. Words are not isolated entities, but rather actions used with different functions. Further, he noted that sentences are instruments that have roles in language-games, that is, the speaking of a language is part of an activity or an action. According to this philosopher, the meaning of a word is found in “its use in the language” (para: 43), especially because the purpose of language is “meant to serve for communication...” (para: 2). But it was in the mid-1950’s that philosophical thinking brought speech act theory to life with the seminal work on speech acts by J. L. Austin and John Searle, two language philosophers who were concerned with meaning, use, and actions. Austin’s first attempts to formalize a theory of communicative action began during the William James lectures that he presented at Harvard University (1956) and that were later published posthumously in his seminal work How to do Things with Words (1962). The British Philosopher initially observed that language serves to accomplish two things: on the one hand, we can describe or report things in the world by means of utterances or declarative statements whose propositional meaning can be judged in terms of truth or falsity conditions (constatives); on the other, we can express utterances to accomplish communicative actions, that is, when we say something, we are automatically doing or performing actions (performatives) which can be felicitous or infelicitous. However, towards the end of the lectures the constative-performative distinction no longer holds; instead, Austin realized that all utterances have qualities that are characteristic of both constatives and performatives. To avoid confusion, the term ‘performative’ was adopted by Austin to suggest that in/by saying something we perform an action, and these actions can be realized with or without a speech act verb. As a result, he proposed a three-way taxonomy of speech acts: 1) a locutionary act refers to the act of saying something meaningful, that is, the act of uttering a fragment or a sentence in the literal sense (referring and predicating); 2) an illocutionary act is an act performed in saying something that has a conventional force such as informing, ordering, warning, complaining, requesting, or refusing; and, 3) a perlocutionary act refers to what we achieve “by saying something such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading” (1962: 109). For Austin, the realization of a particular speech act depended on the appropriate circumstances of the speech event such as having a conventional procedure and the presence of the appropriate persons and circumstances. Austin’s speech act theory was solidified and further developped by the American philosopher John Searle. In his seminal book Speech Acts, Searle (1969) noted that speaking a language is performing speech acts, acts such as making

Chapter 2. Speech acts in context

statements, giving commands, asking questions, making promises, offering apologies, and so on. Languages have different linguistic resources for communicating speech acts. Speech acts can be realized explicitly using performative verbs or speech act verbs (e.g., I apologize, I refuse, I promise, etc.). However, it should be noted that not all speech acts may be realized using speech act verbs, as one cannot use the verb ‘to insult’ to explicitly insult someone (e.g., ‘I insult you!’); but rather, speakers may employ other linguistic resources to express the illocutionary force of a speech act. Inspired by Austin’s original classification of illocutionary forces, Searle (1977) proposed a five-way taxonomy of speech acts. These speech acts are classified according to a taxonomy of illocutionary force: representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Representatives constitute assertions carrying true or false values (e.g., statements); in directive speech acts there is an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to perform an action (e.g., requests, advice); commissive acts create an obligation on the part of the speaker; that is, they commit the speaker to performing an act (e.g., promising or refusing); expressive speech acts express an attitude or an inner state of the speaker which says nothing about the world (e.g., apologies, congratulations, compliments); and, declarations include speech acts in which declarative statements are successfully performed and no psychological state is expressed (e.g., an excommunication or baptism). Further, Searle proposed a set of felicity conditions that have to be held before a speech act can be said to have a particular illocutionary force: 1) propositional content which concerns the reference and predication of an act of a certain type (content condition); 2) conditions that must obtain prior to the performance of the act (preparatory conditions); 3) the speaker’s true intention or belief in performing an illocutionary act (sincerity conditions); and, 4) the conditions that indicate how an utterance is considered; for example, a request is classified as an attempt to get the hearer to perform an action (essential condition). Overall, each condition highlights a different aspect of an utterance: the propositional content focuses only on the textual content; the preparatory conditions focus on the background circumstances; the sincerity condition reflects the speaker’s psychological state; and, the essential condition centers on the illocutionary point of what is said (Schiffrin 1994). Another contribution of Searle’s work in speech act theory is evident in the indirectness-politeness connection. Searle observed that in indirect speech acts “the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer” (1975: 60–61). With regard to politeness, he observed that

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people tend to use indirect speech acts to be polite in conversation; he further suggested that politeness is one important factor, among others, that motivates indirectness in social interaction. The notion of indirectness was further elaborated on by Blum-Kulka (1987) who distinguished two types of indirectness: conventional and non-conventional. Indirectness is conventionalized in the language, as in ‘can you open the door?’, which is intended as a request. In non-conventional indirectness, on the other hand, systematic conventions are present, that is, the speaker’s intentions are heavily context-dependent rather than conventional, as in saying ‘it’s hot in here’, when, given the appropriate circumstances, it may be intended as a request to open the window. The recognition of the force of the illocutionary act depends on the inferential abilities of the hearer to interpret the utterance ‘it’s hot in here’ as an intended request. For Blum-Kulka, politeness and indirectness are connected in the case of conventional indirectness, but not always in the case of non-conventional indirectness. It should be noted that the contributions of speech act theory have influenced empirical research in cross-cultural pragmatics. Notions such as uptake, illocutionary force, conventionality, felicity conditions, and indirectness have been widely employed to examine a wide range of speech acts among native and non-native speakers using both natural and elicited data (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; House & Kasper 1981; Márquez Reiter 2000; Márquez Reiter & Placencia 2005; Trosborg 1987). Of these, the concepts of illocutionary force and conventional indirectness have received the most attention in the examination of requests and apologies. Of the studies mentioned above, most examined speech acts at the micro-level, that is, by conducting a pragmalinguistic analysis of the most frequently used strategies during the production of a particular speech act (e.g., direct and conventionally indirect requests; apologetic formulae). Overall, although Austin’s and Searle’s contributions to speech act theory were not originally proposed to examine sequences of talk, they offered the foundation for analyzing speech act sequences at the discourse level. A revised version of speech act theory should extend its scope to discourse and the study of speech acts in social interaction; that is, an examination of a single sequence of utterances with different functional relationships (Schiffrin 1994; Vanderveken & Kubo 2002). In the next section, the application of speech act theory to the analysis of speech act sequences at the discourse level will be discussed.

2.3


Speech act theory as an approach for examining speech act sequences

In order to capture the interactive nature of speech acts, Edmondson (1981) suggested the examination of “a sequence of speech acts, rather than having a closed pair of such acts” (p. 55). Following Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) model of discourse, Edmondson examined speech act interactions in terms of sequential organization: uptake, head, and appealer. Taking into account the complete speech act interaction, this author observed that some speech acts are the product not of a single utterance, but of a negotiation, a cooperative achievement, or a conversational outcome between two speakers. Similarly, speech act sequences have been analyzed from a discourse-analytic perspective. Using conversational exchanges, Schiffrin (1994) provides various examples of speech act sequences to show how the tools of speech act theory can be applied in the analysis of speech acts in interaction, and how a single sequence of utterances may obtain different functional meanings; for example, given the appropriate circumstances, the utterance Y’want a piece of candy? can be intended as a question, a request, and a offer. Speech act sequences can be analyzed with respect to their sequential structure across the interaction (macro level) or according to the internal structure of a speech act sequence (micro level). At the macro level, speech act sequences (e.g., an invitation-refusal sequence) are realized by means of pre- and post-sequences. Requests, for instance, have been examined as pre-sequences or pre-requests (Gibbs & Mueller 1988) or post-sequences. According to these authors, the main function of pre-requests is “to specify the main obstacles present for the addressee in complying with the request” (1988: 104). In the cross-cultural pragmatics literature, the strategies that constitute the pre- and post-sequences are called supportive moves and refer to the external modification of a head act (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989). These supportive moves may be realized within one turn or across multiple turns across the interaction. In this respect, the negotiation of a speech act may be realized by means of various sequences across the interaction (e.g., invitation-refusal sequence; insistenceacceptance sequence); likewise, each sequence often includes a head act, or the strategy that expresses the illocutionary force, followed by a series of pre- or postsequences that promote the negotiation of face. The head act of a speech act sequence may be internally modified by various expressions that downgrade or upgrade their force. Since the late 1970’s, several taxonomies of politeness structures have been proposed to show that certain linguistic expressions may be used to weaken or mitigate the force of a speech act, and as a result, to convey politeness (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; House

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& Kasper 1981). For example, in specific situations the following structures have been shown to express politeness when they function as mitigators: the politeness marker ‘please’, tag questions (‘open the door, will you?’), hedges (e.g., ‘kind of ’, ‘sort of ’), downtoners (e.g., ‘perhaps,’ ‘possibly’), committers (e.g., ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘I guess’), and hesitators or instances of stuttering (e.g., ‘uhh,’ ‘ah’). Nevertheless, since no linguistic expressions are inherently polite or impolite, during social interaction these expressions are employed to carry out relational work, and only in specific situations may these expressions be interpreted as polite.

2.3.1 Internal modification of a refusal sequence: Epistemic markers The linguistic expressions that weaken or mitigate a refusal have been analyzed as markers of epistemic modality across a speech act sequence. Initial efforts to analyze the epistemic meaning of verbs began in the late 1950s, and focused on predicates that signal the degree of reliability of what is said, as in ‘I think it’s going to rain.’ (Other epistemic verb phrases include ‘I think,’ ‘I believe,’ ‘I know,’ ‘I guess,’ ‘I suppose,’ ‘I feel’). According to some researchers (Coates 1987; Fraser 1980; Haverkate 1994; Nuyts 2001; Palmer 1986; Wierzbicka 2006), epistemic expressions reflect a speaker’s attitude and indicate his/her security or insecurity with respect to the truth of the proposition expressed. Other researchers have observed that using verbs with an epistemic meaning (e.g., ‘I believe...’) is equivalent to a mitigated assertion that is converted into a subjective utterance (Benveniste 1971). That is, the presence of an epistemic marker during a refusal response seems to activate a subjective context in the speaker’s mind and may express uncertainty, presumption, or inference with respect to the speaker’s opinion. Overall, the most common linguistic expressions analyzed as mitigators in the literature on epistemic modality include mental state predicates (e.g., ‘I think,’ ‘I believe’), modal adverbs (e.g., ‘probably’; ‘possibly’), adjectives or degree modifiers (e.g., ‘kind of/sort of ’), and tag questions (e.g., ‘I cannot lend you my car this time, is that ok?’). The speaker who employs these expressions communicates a degree of commitment with respect to the truth of a proposition expressed and may weaken or mitigate the unwelcome news of a dispreferred response. Due to their attenuating qualities, these expressions may encode relational work, and if used in excess in specific situations they may convey politeness (i.e., positively marked behavior) (Locher 2004, 2006; Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2005). Since speech acts occur in context, the next section will examine the role of context in speech act performance.

2.4


Speech acts in context

The notion of context in speech act theory has been approached from different perspectives. According to Austin (1962), the appropriate circumstances for the realization of a speech act comprise the presence of the speaker, the addressee, and the situation. For Searle (1969), context is seen in light of the felicity conditions that are necessary for the performance of a speech act. Specifically, for Austin the context of a speech act is conceived of as a cluster of actual states of affairs or events of different kinds, whereas Searle views the context of a speech act as a set of propositional attitudes of the participants, that is, the beliefs or intentions of the participants. In speech act theory, according to Searle, the nature of context is cognitive because the felicity conditions must hold prior to the performance of a speech act. In this respect, the notion of context is viewed as predetermined, unchangeable, cognitive, and as knowledge that may not be subject to the negotiation of face in social interaction. In addition to Austin’s and Searle’s notion of context, other researchers have observed that context should include the sociocultural aspects of the situation. For example, it has been suggested that a broader view of context should include a set of social circumstances in which utterances “can be produced and interpreted as realizations of their underlying constitutive rules” (Schiffrin 1994: 367). Nevertheless, others view the context of a speech act as dynamic, changing, and as something that the interlocutors are constantly considering during the negotiation of face in social interaction. Sbisà (2002) proposed that three criteria should apply to the context of a speech act, namely, it should be constructed, limited, and objective. For this author, the context of a speech act is constructed and renegotiated during social interaction, and not determined prior to the performance of a speech act, as previously observed by Searle (1969). Sbisà asserts that most importantly, the construction of context during the realization of a speech act is determined by the participants during the ongoing flow of conversation. Second, the context of a speech act is limited to a specific situation and evaluated by the speaker and interlocutor in a particular communicative event. That is, in order to obtain a limited (or specific) evaluation of a speech act, “it should be clear or ascertainable what belongs to context and what does not” (Sbisà 2002: 427). Third, she states that the context of a speech act is objective if it is determined by various external social or material circumstances or “relevant states of affairs occurring in the world, of which participants might not even be aware” (2002: 428). In general, the context of a speech act is seen as dynamic and changeable during the course of social interaction and includes the speaker’s intention, the hearer’s evaluation of the situation, and the social circumstances of a particular situation that represent actions in the world.

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Other researchers have noted that the context of a speech act takes priority in social interaction. For instance, in a careful evaluation of Brown and Levinson’s model of linguistic politeness, Lavandera (1988) observed that the threat of a speech act and the redressive power of a strategy are provided by the delimitation of a particular context. Further, since utterances are neither inherently polite nor impolite, the selection of pragmatic strategies may acquire a specific politeness interpretation according to the definition of the situation and the interlocutors’ evaluation of the speaker’s intention. For Goffman, the notion of context for the negotiation of face relationships is determined by the “rules of the group and the definition of the situation” (1967: 6). Finally, the variable ‘situation’ may influence the degree of deference; in this respect, context may include at least the following variables: the type of speech act, speaker, and gender of the addressee (Zimin 1981). Overall, the context of a speech act should be viewed as shared knowledge between the interlocutors, the social circumstances in which the speech acts are realized and interpreted by a speaker and a hearer, and as a dynamic social entity which is constantly changing according to the speakers’ intentions and the interactional needs of the situation. Most importantly, the context of a speech act should be comprised of at least the following characteristics: the specification of social distance and social power between the interlocutors, the speech act in question, the definition of the situation, the sociocultural circumstances during speech act production, and the gender, level of education, social class, and age of the interlocutors. Having explained the application of speech act theory to discourse (speech act sequences) and the role of context during the negotiation of face, the next section describes the speech act of refusals as realized in social interaction. Then, the most influential studies on refusals are briefly described, followed by a description of the methods used for collecting refusal data in cross-cultural pragmatics (an in-depth discussion of issues on research methodology for data collection in cross-cultural pragmatics is provided in Chapter 3.2).

2.5

The speech act of refusals

The speech act of refusals represents one type of dispreferred response. Refusals belong to the category of commissives because they commit the refuser to performing an action (Searle 1977). As a reactive speech act, a refusal functions as a response to an initiating act and is considered a speech act by which a speaker “[fails] to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (Chen, Ye, and Zhang 1995: 121). The linguistic expressions employed in a refusal sequence may include


direct and indirect strategies, and expressions to reinforce positive facework on the part of the speaker (adjuncts to refusals). For example, a direct refusal is often expressed with precision and clarity (‘No’; ‘No, I can’t; ‘I can’t’). If a refusal response is expressed indirectly, the degree of inference increases as the speaker must choose the appropriate form to soften the negative effects of a direct refusal. Indirect refusals may include the following strategies: a mitigated refusal (‘Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to attend the party’), a reason or explanation (‘I have plans’), an indefinite reply (‘I don’t know if I’ll have time’), an alternative (‘Why don’t we go out for dinner next week?’), a postponement (‘I’d rather take this class next semester’), requests for clarification (‘Did you say Saturday?’) or additional information (‘What time is the party?’), a promise to comply (‘I’ll try to be there, but I can’t promise you anything’), partial repeats of previous utterance (‘…. Monday?, I can’t’), or an expression of regret or apology (‘I’m really sorry; I apologize’). Finally, a refusal response is often accompanied by adjuncts to refusals which may preface or follow the main refusal response. Adjuncts to refusals include: a positive remark (‘Congratulations on your promotion. I am very glad, but…’), an expression of willingness (‘I’d love to, but…’), an expression of gratitude (‘Thanks for the invitation, but…’), partial agreements used to preface a refusal (‘Yes, I agree, but…’), or minimal vocalizations or discourse markers (A:: y, cónchale, mañana no puedo ‘Oh, darn it, tomorrow I can’t’; hí:jole, no puedo ‘darn it, I can’t’). In sum, refusals are complex speech acts that require not only long sequences of negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also “face-saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act” (Gass & Houck 1999: 2). To illustrate the interactive nature of refusals, example (1) shows a simulated interaction that took place at a professor’s office; in this situation, an American student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take an extra class (see codes for transcription conventions at the beginning of this book). (→ indicates refusal response) (1) Advisor: Professor, Student (Participant #2) (United States) 1 Professor: Um, Tyler, I’ve looked over your, uh, transcript, and I’ve noticed that you’ve 2 taken a lot of literature classes, but you haven’t taken any uh linguistics 3 classes, and there is a Spanish Linguistics class that I think would be really 4 beneficial for you to take this semester. 5 Student: →yeah, I don’t know, I’ve thought about that, but – I really – I really felt 6 that I, that I’ve learned enough linguistics before – in my other classes, 7 so:: I – I kinda felt like I wanted to take a literature class. 8 Professor: yeah well this focuses not just on the linguistics that you learned, 9 but it applies it more to – Hispanic Linguistics so I think it would really 10 be beneficial if you’ve had some other linguistics background.

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11 Student: → um-kay, well – I don’t know, I, I’m really not, I don’t feel completely – 12 uh like I needed uh, I guess I feel like I can get enough out of the 13 books that I’ve read and, just from previous classes so::, 14 I’m I’m still kinda unsure about it ((laughs)), um, 15 Professor: um-kay, well, I just think that it would, it would be very beneficial = 16 Student: → =okay, well, I’ll look into it, I’ll think about it some more. 17 Professor: okay, it’s your decision.

The interaction in (1) is realized in seven turns by means of a suggestion-refusal sequence, and features delay, an interactional resource commonly used among NS to postpone a dispreferred response (Lerner 2004; Pomerantz 1984). In response to the professor’s suggestion to take the class (lines 1–4), the student offers an indirect refusal in one turn by means of various turn units (lines 5–7): the refusal is prefaced by a partial agreement (‘yeah’), followed by a vague and hesitant response which justifies his indirect refusal. Upon the professor’s indirect insistence (lines 8–10), the second refusal response is presented by means of another indirect and ambiguous refusal (lines 11–14): prefaced by a minimal vocalization (‘um’) and two discourse markers (‘okay,’ ‘well’), followed by an upcoming dispreferred response using expressions of uncertainty and a mitigated justification. Finally, upon the professor’s last turn (line 15), the student ends the interaction with a vague refusal which politely postpones a definitive refusal (line 16). Overall, the refusal response in (1) is delayed across multiple turns and is presented indirectly to express relational work with the interlocutor; the resources employed to delay the refusal (indirectness, tentativeness, lines 5–7, 11–14) are thus interpreted as polite and appropriate in an academic setting in the U.S.

2.5.1 Empirical studies on refusals The speech act of refusals has been examined in the literature on cross-cultural and second language pragmatics, interpersonal communication, education, and psychology, from different perspectives, including the linguistic and non-linguistic realization of refusals in various settings, perceptions to refusals, and the acquisitional or learning aspect of refusals in first and second language settings. Table 1 presents 51 studies on refusals and rejections to invitations, requests, offers, and suggestions in numerous languages, among native and non-native speakers, children and adults, and in different varieties of English and Spanish. The focus of these studies consists of an analysis of direct and indirect refusal strategies, politeness, refusal sequences, social status differences, face and facework, power and politeness, and the learning of refusals by second language learners.


In some of these studies, the native speaker groups provided baseline data to which the refusal behavior of second language learners is compared, however the true focus of the studies was an analysis of second language pragmatics. The majority of the studies in Table 1 contrasted refusal realization patterns in two cultures or described the refusal behavior of native speakers in one culture, while others examined the refusal behavior of non-native speakers in second language contexts. In this table, studies that employed native speaker groups as the baseline data and whose focus was on second language pragmatics are indicated with an asterisk (*) and those which only elicited refusal data from learners of different native languages in second language (L2) contexts are indicated with two asterisks (e.g., English as L2 or Spanish as L2) (**). The studies are presented in chronological order so as to observe the focus of each study and the evolution of data collection methods employed by researchers from the early 1970s to 2007. The table includes the type of refusal examined, author and year of publication, language or language variety analyzed, the elicitation task employed (e.g., role play, Discourse Completion Tasks [DCT]), and the focus of the study. As shown in Table 1, some studies employed one or a combination of two or more methods to elicit and analyze refusal data in a cross-cultural setting, a single-language study, or among learners in second language contexts. Of the 51 studies that appear in Table 1, 33.3% (or 17 of 51 studies) only employed a written questionnaire (DCTs) to elicit refusals or rejections; 19.6% (or 10 of 51 studies) used role plays alone (open or closed), two studies (3.9%) used a judgment task questionnaire (Blewitt et al. 2000; Chen 1996), and one study (2%) utilized a multiple-choice questionnaire (Moriyama 1990). Natural or ethnographic refusal data were analyzed as the only data entry in 15.7% (or 8 of 51 studies) of the studies outlined in Table 1 and included either refusals obtained from natural conversations and semi-structured interviews (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991; Hussein 1995; Labov & Fanshel 1977; Laohaburanakit 1995; Schrader-Kniffki 2007; Torrens Salemi 2006; Wootton 1991) or collected by means of notebook data (Frescura 1997). Finally, to enhance the validity of the data, 25.5% (or 13 of 51 studies) utilized a combination of two or three methods including role plays and DCTs (Kodama 1996; Margalef-Boada 1993; Sasaki 1998), natural data and DCTs (Al-Issa 1998; Beebe & Cummings 1996), intuition/natural data and dialogue questionnaire/role plays (Smith 1975; Ueda 1974), DCTs and judgment . Studies on second language pragmatics whose focus was on the effects of instruction (implicit/explicit), rather than on the realization patterns of refusals are not included in Table 1. For an overview of studies which examine the effects of instruction on refusals in the classroom, see Bacelar Da Silva (2003) and Félix-Brasdefer (2006, in press [and references therein])

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Table 1. Studies on refusals among native and non-native speakers in numerous languages and different varieties of English and Spanish Type of refusal Author & year examined of publication

Language / va- Elicitation task riety examined employed

Focus of study

Refusals to requests

Shigeta 1974

US English Japanese

Closed role play

Cross-cultural


Ueda 1974

Japanese

Intuition/natural data Dialog questionnaire

Japanese avoidance silence, vagueness


Smith 1975

US English

Natural/Observational data and role plays

Guilt refusal Assertiveness


Labov & Fanshel 1977

US English

Natural/therapeu- Refusal sequences tic discourse

Rejections to requests

Wootton 1981

Scottish English Natural data

Parent-child interactions

Refusals to requests, invitations

Kinjo 1987

US English Japanese

Closed role play

Cross-cultural

US English Japanese English as L2

DCT

Pragmatic development

Japanese

Multiple choice questionnaire

Refusal patterns Gender refusals

US English Japanese English as L2

DCT

Cross-cultural Interlanguage

Rejections in Bardovi-Harlig & US English academic ad- Hartford 1991 (*) English as L2 vising sessions

Natural data

Rejections to advice Interlanguage

Refusals to Ramos 1991 (*) invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English Puerto Rican Spanish English as L2

DCT


Refusals to Takahashi & invitations, Beebe 1987 (*) suggestions, requests, offers Refusals to a request

Moriyama 1990

Refusals to Beebe et al. invitations, 1990 (*) suggestions, requests, offers


Tickle 1991

Japanese

DCT

Japanese refusals in business setting

Refusing an invitation

García 1992

Peruvian Spanish

Role play

Peruvian invitation refusals – equals


Table 1 (continued) Type of refusal Author & year examined of publication

Language / variety Elicitation task Focus of study examined employed

Refusals to Lyuh 1992 invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English Korean

DCT

Cross-cultural


English as L2

DCT Verbal reports

Verbal reporting Methodology

DCT

Interlanguage Pragmatic transfer

Robinson 1992 (**)

Ikoma & Shimura Japanese Requests to 1993 (*) invitations, English as L2 suggestions, requests, offers Margalef-Boada Refusals to 1993 (*) invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

DCT German Peninsular Spanish Role play Spanish as L2

Methodology Cross-cultural Interlanguage

Refusals to Stevens 1993 (*) invitations, requests, offers

US English Arabic English as L2

DCT

Cross-cultural White lies Interlanguage

Rejection messages

US English Japanese

DCT

Cross-cultural

Saeki & O’Keefe 1994

Chen, Ye, & Refusals to Zhang 1995 invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

Mandarin Chinese DCT

Refusals to invitations, offers

Hussein 1995

Arabic

Natural data

Indirect refusing in Arabic


Laohaburanakit 1995

Japanese

Natural telephone data

Authentic refusals Japanese textbooks

Refusal to a request

Beebe & Cummings 1996

US English

DCT Telephone conversations

Methodology English refusals

Refusals in a variety of situations

Chen 1996 (*)

US English English as L2

Metapragmatic Judgments judgment task Cross-cultural questionnaire Interlanguage


Kitao 1996

British English

DCT

Preference organization


Kodama 1996

Japanese

Role play DCT

Methodology Japanese refusing

Chinese refusals Social status

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Table 1 (continued) Type of refusal Author & year examined of publication Refusals to requests

Language / vari- Elicitation task ety examined employed

Liao & Bresnahan US English 1996 Mandarin Chinese

Focus of study

DCT

Cross-cultural

Al-Shalawi 1997 Refusals to invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English Arabic

DCT

Cross-cultural

Refusals to an offer, a proposal

Cramer 1997 (*)


Role play

Japanese business refusals

Refusals to an offer

Frescura 1997

Italian

Natural (Notebook data)

Ethnography of Italian refusals

Refusals to dates

Widjaja 1997 (*)


Role plays verbal reports

Pragmatic transfer L2 refusals

Al-Issa 1998 (*) Refusals to invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English Phase observation Jordanian Arabic DCT English as L2

Interlanguage Cross-cultural

Refusals to invitations, offers

Sasaki 1998 (**)

English as L2

DCT Role play

Methodology Oral/written refusals


Smith 1998

US English

DCT Judgment task

Situational variables

Beckers 1999 Refusals to invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English German

DCT

Cross-cultural

Refusals to Requests

Bresnahan et al. 1999

Chinese: Taiwan DCT & Singapore

Cross-dialectal (In)directness

Declining an invitation

García 1999

Venezuelan Spanish

Role play

Deferential and solidarity politeness

Gass & Houck Refusals to (**) 1999 invitations suggestions, requests, offers

English as L2

Role play

Refusal sequences Pragmatic transfer

Refusals to invitations, requests

Japanese

DCT

Japanese refusing Male/female differences

Iwata 1999


Table 1 (continued) Type of refusal Author & year examined of publication

Language / variety examined

Elicitation task employed

Focus of study

Refusals to word labels

US English

Verbal judgement task

Toddler refusals Word refusals

Sadler & Eröz Refusals to invitations, 2001 suggestions, requests, offers


DCT

Cross-cultural

Refusals to Requests

US English

Written & Oral DCT Experimental technique Natural data

Methodology Status conditions

Refusals to Furumura 2002 invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

Japanese

Role plays

Japanese refusals Status differences

Refusals to Nelson et al. 2002 invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

US English Egyptian Arabic

Modified role play Cross-cultural (closed role play)

US English Latin American Spanish Spanish as L2

Role play Verbal reports


Refusals to Henstock 2003 invitations, (*) requests, offers

US English Japanese Japanese as L2

DCT Retrospective reports


Refusals to Kwon 2004 invitations, suggestions, requests, offers

Korean US English

DCT

Cross-cultural

Children refusals Imposition effect

Refusal to an invitation

Blewitt et al. 2000

Turnbull 2001

Félix-Brasdefer (*) 2003a


Goldbeck 2006

US English (Children)

Telephone role plays

School refusal

Torrens Salemi 2006

US English

Observational data Perceptions of (Semi-structured school refusal Interviews)


VonCanon 2006 Peninsular Spanish Role play (*) US English Spanish as L2


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Table 1 (continued) Type of refusal Author & year examined of publication Refusals to requests

Language / variety examined

Schrader-Kniffki Zapotec (Oaxaca, 2007 Mexico)

Elicitation task employed

Focus of study

Natural data

Intercultural communication Silence

* Indicates that the native speaker data were employed as the baseline for analyzing learner speech act behavior. ** Indicates that only non-native (learner) refusal data were elicited and analyzed.

tasks (Smith 1998), written and oral DCT, experimental technique, and natural data (Turnbull 2001), DCTs and verbal reports (Henstock 2003; Robinson 1992), and role plays and verbal reports (Félix-Brasdefer 2003a; Widjaja 1997). With respect to the languages examined, US English has been by far the most commonly used language selected to conduct cross-cultural or interlanguage pragmatics research (45% or 23 of 51 studies) or as the only language to analyze the realization patterns of refusals among native (16% or 8 of 51 studies) and non-native (L2 English learner data only) (6% or 3 of 51 studies) speakers in the United States. The languages selected to compare to the realization patterns of refusals in US English include different varieties of Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and several varieties of Spanish. Single language studies that examined aspects of refusals in languages other than US English include Scottish English (Wootton 1981), British English (Kitao 1996), Italian (Frescura 1997), and Zapotec (Oaxaca, Mexico) (Schrader-Kniffki 2007). Second language studies that examine how non-native speakers perform and perceive refusals in the United States include adult learners of various native languages (Al-Issa 1998; Beebe et al. 1990; Chen 1996; Félix-Brasdefer 2003a; Gass & Houck 1999; Sasaki 1998; Robinson 1992). Finally, studies on refusals in Spanish are limited to Peruvian (García 1992), Puerto Rican (1991), Venezuelan (García 1999), and Peninsular Spanish (Margalef-Boada 1993; VonCanon 2006). Refusals in Mexican Spanish have not been systematically investigated, and this book contributes to an understanding of the structure and interactive nature of this speech act in one variety of Mexican Spanish that has not been previously examined.


2.5.2 Studies on English and Spanish refusals In this section, an overview of studies on refusals is presented with particular attention to the realization patterns of refusals in English and Spanish. First, a review of dispreferred responses is provided with a focus on the strategies used by Americans in disagreements in social interaction. Next, the seminal study by Beebe et al. (1990) on refusals will be analyzed, because their classification of semantic formulas has influenced most studies on refusals to date. Then, the refusal behavior of speakers of U.S. English will be examined and compared to other varieties of English and to other languages, followed by a discussion of refusals in several varieties of Spanish. Using a Conversation–Analytic (CA) perspective, different studies have examined the sequential organization of preferred and dispreferred responses among native speakers of English. The focus has been on how turn shapes may differ as to whether they occur in preferred or dispreferred activities. Using a corpus of conversations of native speakers of English, Pomerantz (1984) observed that agreements are organized as preferred activities and disagreements as dispreferred activities. Agreements may occupy an entire turn, may be accomplished with stated agreement components, and may be realized with a minimization of gap between the prior turn’s completion and the agreement turn’s initiation (1984: 65). Disagreements, on the other hand, “may produce delays, such as ‘no talk,’ requests for clarification, partial repeats, and other repair initiators, turn prefaces, and so on” (1984: 70). Crucial features of disagreements are that they are often delayed within turns and they may be prefaced by means of a series of minimal vocalizations or perturbations (‘uh’s,’ ‘mmm’) or discourse markers (‘well’, ‘okay’). Further, disagreement components may also include the presence of back channels to signal involvement between the participants such as ‘uh huh,’ ‘yeah,’ ‘right’ which may occur as a single turn or within a turn. The components of dispreferred responses influenced the classification of refusals proposed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990). These authors examined the realization patterns of refusals from 60 participants: 20 Japanese speaking Japanese, 20 Japanese speaking English, and 20 Americans speaking English. All participants were asked to fill out a written questionnaire (DCT) which included 12 situations in four stimulus types: three refusals to requests, three to invitations, three to offers, and three to suggestions. Each group was required to refuse a person of higher social status, a person of lower social status, and a person of equal social status. Further, based on Beebe and Cummings (1985), Beebe . A discussion of how refusals are performed across languages and how the results of the current study compare is provided in Chapter 6 (Section 6.7).

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et al. (1990) proposed a classification of refusals comprised of three categories: 1) direct refusals (e.g., no, I can’t); 2) indirect refusals (reason/explanation, alternative, regret, wish, set condition for future/past acceptance, statement of principle, statement of philosophy, acceptance as a refusal, avoidance); and, 3) adjuncts to refusals (positive opinion, empathy, pause fillers, gratitude). Results showed that Americans usually employed a form of indirect communication in refusing all situations, ordered semantic formulas in the same way for both levels of unequal status (lower and higher), and used the same type and a lower frequency of semantic formulas between interlocutors of unequal status, whereas the Japanese speakers used a higher frequency of different semantic formulas with interlocutors of different social status. Also, Japanese learners of English reacted differently to higher status versus lower status, a possible result of pragmatic transfer from their native language. In a different study, using a modified version of the DCT in which participants responded orally to a series of refusals in one turn (oral DCT), Nelson et al. (2002) analyzed the strategies utilized by Americans and Egyptian Arabic speakers in various refusals to invitations, to suggestions, to requests, and to offers. Here it was found that both groups prefer similar (indirect) strategies with similar frequency. In general, the results of Nelson et al. are not consistent with those of Al-Issa (1998), who identified a higher frequency of indirect strategies among the Jordanians than the Americans, nor with those of Hussein (1995), who observed that Arabic speakers mainly employed indirect refusals with acquaintances of equal status and with close friends of unequal status. With regard to American refusals, it has been shown that in the United States refusals must be clearly articulated and reasons do not necessarily have to be offered (Kanemoto 1993). Also, when rejecting a professor’s advice to take a class, it has been observed that Americans in the United States are more likely to maintain status balance with a professor by offering alternatives and mitigated rejections, whereas second language learners of English tend to avoid a rejection and offer unmitigated responses; even advanced second language learners are unable to choose the appropriate status-preserving strategies when negotiating a rejection with a professor (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991). The refusal behavior of native (Spain and Latin America) and non-native speakers of Spanish has been analyzed in a few varieties of Spanish. With regard to Peninsular Spanish, Margalef-Boada (1993) compared refusal responses among native speakers of German (N = 38) and Peninsular Spanish (Catalonia) (N = 38), with German intermediate learners of Spanish (N = 40) using two types of data elicitation methods (DCTs and role plays). Results indicated that the most commonly used semantic formulas for all subjects were: explanation, regret, direct refusal, and expressions of positive opinion, empathy, and agreement. Further,


no major differences were observed among the native speakers of Spanish with regard to the frequency of various semantic formulas employed in both DCTs and role plays: direct refusals, explanations, and positive feeling. In a more recent study in which role plays were used to collect the data, VonCanon (2006) compared the refusal behavior (refusals to two requests: refusing to lend notes to a classmate [–D] and refusing to stay late at work [+D]) of native speakers from Spain (Salamanca) (N = 20), U.S. Americans (upper Midwestern United States) (N = 20), and American intermediate learners of Spanish during a study abroad program in Salamanca, Spain (N = 25). Her results show that while the preference for strategy choice varied for each situation, all three groups employed reasons as the most frequent strategy for performing a refusal. Direct refusals were infrequently utilized by both groups of native speakers in the Notes situation, whereas the learners heavily relied on direct refusals in both situations. With regard to differences between native speaker groups, the Americans often carried out their refusals by means of indefinite replies and apologies while the Spaniards utilized these strategies less frequently and were less tentative in their responses. The realization patterns of refusals have also been examined in a few varieties of Latin American Spanish. For example, using a DCT instrument, Ramos (1991) investigated the cross-cultural realization patterns of 20 US English speakers, 20 speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish, and 40 Puerto Rican learners of English as a second language to examine the frequency, order, and content of written refusals. His findings showed that the degree of directness differed between the groups; that is, Puerto Ricans were more direct than Americans with interlocutors of both equal and higher status. Among the learners, evidence of pragmatic transfer was observed with the low-proficiency group, whose refusals were “shorter, simpler, and more direct than refusals among [native speakers] of American English” (1990: 169). These differences were also observed when the production of the low- and high-proficiency groups were compared in situations of equal and unequal status. García (1992) compared the politeness strategies used by 20 native speakers of Peruvian Spanish (ten males and ten females, all from Lima) when declining an invitation from a friend in one role-play situation. The strategies for García’s study were classified into solidarity and deference politeness strategies based on Scollon & Scollon (1983). Refusal strategies were classified as head acts or supportive moves (cf. Blum-Kulka et al. 1989). The findings of her study revealed that refusing an invitation was realized in two stages: 1) invitation-response; and, 2) insistence-response. In the first stage, speakers employed deference politeness for head acts as a means of expressing respect, while in the second they adopted solidarity politeness strategies as head acts. The second stage in the speech act was incorporated because, according to García, in this Peruvian sociocultural setting,

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the act of insistence constitutes a polite act as well as a sociocultural expectation; not insisting, conversely, “might make the invitation sound insincere and the potential guest feel unwanted” (1992: 237). In a later study, García (1999) set out to investigate the patterns of politeness strategies used by 40 Venezuelans in two speech acts, inviting and responding to an invitation, using role-play data. Results suggested that when refusing an invitation, participants were highly deferential in the first two stages, invitation-response and insistence-response, and they chose deference politeness strategies over solidarity politeness strategies as head acts. However, for the third stage, wrap-up, these participants preferred the exclusive use of solidarity politeness strategies as head acts. Using role plays and retrospective verbal reports, Félix-Brasdefer (2003a) examined the refusal strategies used by ten speakers of US English and ten speakers of Spanish from various countries in Latin America. The results from the roleplay and verbal-report data showed that Americans showed a greater preference for directness and truthfulness than the Latin Americans who were more indirect and highly verbose in their responses. Overall, since a non-interactive instrument (DCT or closed role play) was used to collect the data in two of the studies above (Beebe et al. 1990; Nelson et al. 2002), the results of the English data in these studies do not reflect the sequential organization of refusals across turns. Consequently, the results from the English refusals need to be substantiated with additional empirical data (production and perception) in other contexts and in other populations that focus on the negotiation aspect of refusals in both formal and informal situations. With regard to Spanish refusals, only one study used a combination of role plays and DCTs to examine the refusal behavior of Spaniards (Margalef-Boada 1993), but the description of the role-play situations lacked sufficient contextual information and the Spanish population included bilingual speakers of Spanish and Catalan, thus, the results must be interpreted with some caution. And although the results of VonCanon’s study (2006) shed some light on the refusal behavior in the Spanish of Salamanca, she only examined refusals in two request contexts, which limits its generalizability. Finally, few studies have collected perception data on different aspects of politeness. For example, retrospective reports were used in only two studies to supplement the refusal data obtained from the role-play scenarios (Félix-Brasdefer 2003a) and the written questionnaires (DCT) (Henstock 2003). In addition, one recent study (Márquez Reiter et al. 2005) employed a modified version of the verbal report technique (post-performance questionnaires) to examine the perceptions of conventionally indirect requests between Spaniards and Britons. Other studies have employed informal techniques for examining the participants’ perceptions of politeness in English (Mills 2003) and Costa Rican Spanish (Muril-


lo Medrano 2004), but most studies to date have not incorporated perception data as part of the research design. Nevertheless, the use of some type of instrument for measuring perceptions of pragmatic behavior is important in cross-cultural pragmatics research because one can gain insight into the participants’ sociocultural expectations as well as differences with respect to the perceptions of social distance and power between the interlocutors.

2.6

Concluding remarks

After laying the foundations of speech act theory and the role of context, a discourse approach to speech acts was described: speech act sequences. In the current study, an analysis of refusals as sequences will be adopted in order to observe the realization patterns of refusals between Mexicans and Americans in comparable situations. Further, a look at the methods used to collect refusal data in different studies suggests that little attention has been given to the interactional patterns of refusal sequences. In the current study, the role-play data, which are the primary data to be analyzed, will be supplemented by retrospective verbal reports as a means of examining the participants’ perceptions of various aspects of politeness in two communities, one in Mexico and one in the United States. The data in the current study were triangulated in order to enhance the credibility of the role-play data. The next chapter describes the methodology and organization of the present investigation. It includes a description of a pilot study in addition to information regarding the participants, data collection methods, and procedures used to examine the refusal data in Mexico and the United States. It also provides an inventory of the linguistic strategies employed in this study to examine the refusal data, as well as the methods of data analysis.

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chapter 3

Methodology and organization of the study

3.1

Introduction

The aim of this book is two-fold: first, it seeks to examine the similarities and differences in the realization patterns of refusals between Mexican and American males in situations of equal and unequal status. The second aim of this study is to analyze the perceptions of politeness (metapragmatic politeness1) during the negotiation of a refusal. The previous chapter presented an approach for examining refusals at the discourse level (speech act sequences) and highlighted the methods commonly employed to collect refusal data. This chapter builds on the data collection methods used in cross-cultural pragmatics research to examine speech act performance in social interaction. First, four methods commonly used to gather speech-act data in cross-cultural pragmatic research will be examined with respect to the issues of reliability and validity: the ethnographic method, discourse completion tasks, role plays, and verbal reports (3.2). Then, after outlining the organization of the current study (3.3) and the results of a pilot study (3.4), the data collection procedures for the present study are described (3.5), followed by a description and examples of the classification system (pragmatic strategies and internal modification) that was utilized to analyze the role-play data, as well as the criteria employed to examine the verbal report information (3.6). Finally, the data analysis procedures (3.7) employed in this study are explained.

3.2

Methodological issues: Data collection methods in pragmatics research

The methods commonly utilized in cross-cultural pragmatics range from the observation of natural discourse to the collection of elicited data. They include the ethnographic method, elicited conversations, interviews, field notes, role plays, production questionnaires (e.g., discourse completion tasks), multiple-choice questionnaires, scaled-response instruments, diaries, and verbal reports. Since

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the instrument chosen to analyze social interaction (e.g., turn-taking, mitigation, (in)directness) may affect the credibility and interpretation of the data, researchers should be aware of the reliability and validity of the particular instrument they employ. Although reliability provides information on whether an instrument (e.g., role plays) administered to the same respondent on a different occasion would yield similar results, validity refers to “the degree to which a test measures what it claims, or purports, to be measuring” (Brown 1996: 231). Thus, the instrument employed to collect cross-cultural pragmatic data should be reliable and, to the degree possible, valid.

3.2.1 Ethnographic data The ethnographic approach to cross-cultural pragmatics attempts to create an emic perspective (or global view) and to add validity in research through persistent observation, prolonged engagement, observation of social interaction and conversational routines, accumulation of sufficient empirical evidence, and data triangulation (Davis & Henze 1998). The focus of natural data is not often the analysis of a particular speech act, but rather, the observation of a communicative event in which multiple speech acts co-occur. To enhance the credibility of natural data and to provide reliable conclusions, ethnographers triangulate through different methods such as persistent participant-observation, interviews, questionnaires, field notes, and recordings. The main objective for using different sources of data is to formulate hypotheses, to reject or reformulate those hypotheses in continuing data collection, and to provide reliable conclusions regarding a particular communicative event where a variety of speech acts may intersect. One advantage of the ethnographic method is that spontaneous data are collected in naturally occurring contexts. With this method, however, the observer’s paradox is often mentioned, that is, whether the researcher’s presence will alter the course of the interaction, and whether this effect will be aggravated by the presence of a video camera (Labov 1972). When Labov was unable to avoid the effects of the observer’s paradox, he resorted to other techniques such as the sociolinguistic interview that attempts to obtain natural and systematic data under controlled circumstances. Ethnographic data are typically collected by means of participant observation at the research site and may include recording of spontaneous conversations, written field notes (Beebe 1994; Duranti 1997), and elicited conversation, such as the sociolinguistic interview, in which “one party asks the questions and the other party gives the answers” (Schegloff 1992: 118).

Chapter 3. Methodology and organization of the study

Some limitations for gathering naturally-occurring data for cross-cultural research purposes are well known in the literature on pragmatics and have been pointed out by many authors, such as Beebe & Cummings (1996); Cohen (1998); Félix-Brasdefer (2007); Kasper & Dahl (1991). For example, one disadvantage of natural data is that it seems almost impossible to control for a variety of sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age, educational level, ethnic group, and social class. In addition, the pragmatic feature in question (e.g., politeness, mitigation, indirectness) cannot be captured with relatively high frequencies and in comparable situations. Another difficulty when doing contrastive work across languages using authentic data alone is that it is difficult to obtain similar utterances in two or more languages, thus, the researcher is almost obligated to contrive situations for the purposes of comparison. Consequently, if the researcher’s goal is to examine the realization patterns (frequency, distribution, and content) of pragmatic strategies used by native speakers of two different cultures under similar circumstances and using the same speech act, ethnographic data may not be an option. Other methods of data elicitation such as production questionnaires or role plays may be an alternative. To control social variables (gender, age, social distance and power) in comparable situations, researchers have opted for these methods to elicit written, oral, and perception speech act data.

3.2.2 Production questionnaires: Discourse completion tasks The most commonly used data elicitation method in pragmatics research has been a form of written questionnaire or Discourse Completion Task (DCT). While there are various formats, the traditional DCT consists of “scripted dialogs that represent socially differentiated situations. Each dialog is preceded by a short description of the situation, specifying the setting, and the social distance between the participants and their status relative to each other, followed by an incomplete dialog” (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 13–14). In these situations, participants are asked to respond to each situation in writing according to how they believe they would respond in a real-life situation. Using a DCT instrument to collect speech-act data offers the following advantages, which are well known in the literature: collection of large amounts of data in short periods of time, classification of the most frequent and stereotypical strategies employed to perform a particular speech act, and control over sociolinguistic variables (age, gender, social status and power). As a result, this instrument provides more systematic and comparable data. Nevertheless, it is also well known that written questionnaires do not permit the researcher to gather pragmatic features commonly found in oral discourse such as distribution of turns,

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sequencing of actions, prosodic features (stress, pitch), and other features that may have pragmatic import such as hesitation, repetition, reformulation, mitigation, and non-verbal signals (silence, laughter, or facial expressions) (Beebe & Cummings 1996; Cohen 1998; Félix-Brasdefer 2003b, 2007; Kasper 2000). In an attempt to improve the quality of the DCT and to make it closer to oral discourse, Billmyer and Varghese (2000) investigated the effects of enhancing the situational prompt on the responses of native and non-native speakers of English. These authors concluded that “content-enriched DCT prompts elicit more robust external modification and elaboration than do the archetypal content-poor prompts which most DCTs studies to date have used” (2000: 543). Despite the advantages of the enhanced DCTs, if the research purpose is to examine interactional features of speech acts, role plays represent a better alternative.

3.2.3 Role plays Role plays elicit spoken data in which at least two interlocutors are engaged in social interaction. According to Crookall and Saunders, a role play can be defined as “a social or human activity in which participants ‘take on’ and ‘act out’ specified ‘roles’, often within a predefined social framework or situational blueprint (a ‘scenario’)” (1989:15–16). Role plays can be of two types: closed and open (Kasper & Dahl 1991). In the closed role play, the participant responds to a role-play situation without a reply from an interlocutor. Open role plays, on the other hand, specify the actors’ roles, but the course and outcome of the conversation are not predetermined. During a role play interaction, participants are instructed to read a situational description and respond orally as they would in a real situation. Although simulated role plays do not elicit data in natural settings, they have the advantage of allowing the researcher to control various social variables such as social distance, social power, gender, and age. Unlike natural data, role plays can elicit high frequencies of the pragmatic feature under investigation in comparable situations.

3.2.4 Verbal reports One way to analyze the perception of speech acts is by means of retrospective verbal reports commonly used in both psychology and in pragmatics research (Cohen 1998, 2004; Ericsson & Simon 1993). Retrospective reporting consists of obtaining verbal reports from the participants immediately after the completion of a task while much information is still available in short-term memory and can be directly reported or used as ‘retrieval cues’. It is said that a “durable [...] memory


trace is laid down of the information heeded successively while completing a task” (Ericsson & Simon 1993: 16). By administering verbal reports just after a task is finished, memory traces can be partially accessed from short-term memory or retrieved from long-term memory (retrieval cues) and verbalized. In response to criticisms of verbal reports (Seliger 1983), Cohen (2004) observed that this technique can be an effective and a useful source of information if the verbal reports are collected with care. Most importantly, retrospective reporting provides mentalistic data with regard to cognitive processing. The main purpose of using this technique is to reveal in detail what information participants attended to while performing a task. Verbal reports have been employed in pragmatics research because “one may learn what the respondents actually perceived about each situation (e.g., what they perceived about the relative role status of the interlocutors) and how their perceptions influenced their responses” (Cohen 2004: 321). Finally, collecting verbal report data allows us to examine perceptions of (im)politeness and (in)directness in comparable situations in cross-cultural contexts. Overall, all of the methods reviewed above can be evaluated in terms of three characteristics: comparability, interactivity, and consequentiality (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 2005). Comparability refers to whether two or more language samples can be compared, that is, do speech events have similar time-frames, topic selection, and fixed participant roles? Interactivity describes language samples in which speakers have the opportunity to take turns during face-to-face interaction. Finally, consequentiality refers to the fact that the data have real-world consequences as in naturally occurring talk. In light of this information, production questionnaires (e.g., DCTs, closed role plays) are used for research purposes and are the most controlled of these data collection methods, yielding language samples in high comparability, but limited in interactional scope. Role plays are also employed for research purposes, are comparable, and have the advantage of being interactive and conducted in face-to-face interaction in a wide range of situations. Ordinary natural conversation is both interactive and consequential, but language samples that are obtained are not comparable. One type of natural data that is comparable, however, is institutional discourse. Given the goal-oriented nature of institutional talk and the fixed roles of the interactants, this type of discourse seems to be the ideal way for examining natural conversation, for example in academic advising sessions (Bardovi-Harlig & Harford 1991), patientdoctor interactions (Caffi 2007), therapeutic discourse (Labov & Fanshel 1977), or requests in corner store interactions in Quito (Ecuador) and Madrid (Spain) (Placencia 2005). Although the data obtained using an ethnographic approach are realistic, this method is the least controlled (of the three) and as Kasper & Dahl (1991) observed, “sufficient instances of cross-linguistically and cross-culturally compara-

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ble data are difficult to collect through observation of authentic conversation” (p. 245). Although role plays permit the gathering of simulated data, if they are administered with care and include sufficient contextual information (age, gender, social distance and power) in the situational descriptions participants receive, this technique can be useful for examining sociopragmatic variation at the discourse level. Further, collecting perception data by means of retrospective verbal reports enhances the credibility of role-play data. In general, the data obtained from each of these pragmatic instruments reflects the fact that each method measures specific aspects of pragmatics and that there may be task effects associated with each instrument.

3.3

Organization of the current study

3.3.1 Participants Forty male university students participated in this study: 20 native speakers of Mexican Spanish residing in Mexico and 20 native speakers of American English residing in the United States. All students filled out a consent form before agreeing to participate in the study and were remunerated for their participation. The 20 Mexican participants were monolingual Spanish speakers, were natives of the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico (located approximately 60 miles southeast of Mexico City), and shared the same regional Mexican dialect. None of these participants had visited an English-speaking country before and all were undergraduate students at the Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala in the School of Philosophy and Letters during the time of data collection (Summer 2001); students’ majors included Literature, Philosophy, Education, and Applied Linguistics. Approximately 50% of the students lived in the city of Tlaxcala and the others came from nearby towns to attend the state university. Eighteen of the Mexican participants were single and two were married. The age of the participants in this group ranged from 21 to 26 years (mean age: 22.3 years). With respect to social class in Latin America, it has been observed that this variable is quite complex. As members of rural areas often commute to urban areas for employment and educational opportunities, it is hard to determine the social class of a particular city with certainty (Moreno Fernández 1998). The Mex-

. A subset of the Mexican data has appeared in publications of mine (Félix-Brasdefer [2006a]). However, the data presented in this book have been reanalyzed and examined with additional statistical tests to validate the findings presented here.


ican population in this study may best be described as representing a continuum between the middle-to-lower middle class. Conversely, the 20 Americans were selected from the student population at the University of Minnesota during the fall of 2001. All were native speakers of English and were originally from Minnesota (N = 16) or Wisconsin (N = 4), two geographic areas which share the upper Midwest dialect of English (Allen 1973). The areas of specialization of these students included English, Political Science, History, Business, Psychology, Sociology, Physics, and Biology. All of the American participants were single and had not visited a Spanish-speaking country before. The age of these participants ranged from 18 to 24 years (mean age: 20.85 years). The American population in this study may best be described as belonging to the middle class. Overall, a similar university environment (both public universities, University of Minnesota and Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala) and a similar regional dialect characterized each group of native speakers as members of one community of practice (Wenger 1998).

3.3.2 Instrumentation The data for the present investigation were collected using open role plays supplemented by retrospective verbal reports. To obtain natural speech act performance, Wolfson (1981) pointed out that data need to be gathered “through [direct] observation and participation in a great variety of spontaneously occurring speech situations” (p. 9). However, Cohen (1998) noted some disadvantages with respect to gathering naturalistic data. Based on Cohen’s observations, it was considered that the following might pose a problem for the present investigation if data had been collected in naturally occurring situations: 1) age and gender of the participants would have been difficult to control; 2) data might not have yielded enough or any examples of target items (e.g., strategies used in a refusal sequence, mitigators); and, 3) collecting and analyzing natural data is extremely time-consuming. Given the cross-cultural focus of this book, the collection of natural data would not have allowed the researcher to control the following variables: age, gender (male), level of education (university), speech act type, and situation type. Further, since data from both groups were collected in Mexico and the United States, it would have been almost impossible to gather natural data from comparable refusal situations and at different levels of social status (i.e., equal and unequal).

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Role plays For the current study, an open role play was used to collect the production data because it permitted the researcher to control the variables mentioned above and to examine the inventory and frequency of linguistic strategies employed by male university participants in Mexico and the United States in both formal and informal situations. As mentioned previously, although role plays do not provide the researcher with authentic data, it has been shown that they represent an approximation to spoken discourse, as they show high indices of pragmatic features (e.g., politeness, mitigation, indirectness) (Félix-Brasdefer 2003b, 2007), contain a variety of discourse markers (Schiffrin 2001), as well as repetitions, hesitations, and vagueness (Lakoff 1982). Finally, a role play instrument was selected because of the following three advantages: 1) it enables the researcher to obtain complete conversational interactions, that is, data include openings and closings of conversations; 2) it allows the researcher to exert some degree of control over the conversation; and, 3) it reflects a consciousness of the appropriateness of language use (Scarcella 1979: 277).

Retrospective verbal reports In addition to role-play data which comprise the primary corpus in this book, retrospective verbal reports were analyzed as complementary data in order to corroborate the findings of the production data. Retrospective reporting, conducted immediately after the role-play task, is used in pragmatics research after performing a speech act to reconstruct the psycholinguistic processes of speakers. In the current study, verbal reports were employed in conjunction with the role-play data because it has been observed that verbal reports have the potential for providing insights into the production and perception of speech acts (Cohen 2004). Before the organization and rationale of the present study are presented and as a precursor to the current study, the results of a pilot test are briefly described, followed by the section of data collection and procedures for the current study.

3.4

Pilot study

The objectives of the pilot study were to analyze: 1) the representativeness of the sample population; 2) the contextual information included in the role-play prompts; 3) the authenticity of the role-play situations; 4) the effectiveness of the verbal report interview; and, finally, 5) the inventory of classification and coding


strategies; that is, the identification of the most commonly used strategies among Mexicans and Americans when refusing invitations, requests, and suggestions.

3.4.1 Participants, instrumentation, and data collection procedures Twenty subjects participated in the pilot study: 10 male speakers of Mexican Spanish and 10 male speakers of American English. The Mexican participants (mean age: 29.3 years) were all residing in Minneapolis at the time of data collection and all were studying at the University of Minnesota (nine were graduate students and one was an undergraduate). Eight participants were from Mexico City, one was from the eastern coast of Mexico (Veracruz), and one was from northern Mexico (Monterrey). The American participants (mean age: 25.5 years) were all undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota. Of this group, five were from Minnesota, three were from Wisconsin, one was from South Dakota, and one was from Utah. Two types of data elicitation instruments were employed in the pilot study: 1) role plays; and, 2) retrospective verbal reports. The role-play instrument consisted of nine situations: one apology, one complaint, one compliment, and six refusals. The description of the situations suggested the degree of social power (+/– P) and social distance (+/–D) between the participants. (The mean number of words in the situations was 51.6). Of these, four speech acts (two apologies, one complaint, and one compliment) were used as distractor items. Of the other six situations that served as the experimental items, three represented formal situations and three informal situations, namely, two refusals to an invitation (friends [–D, –P]; employee-boss [+D, +P]), two refusals to a request (classmates [+D, –P]; bossemployee [+D, +P]), and two refusals to a suggestion (friends [–D, –P]; studentprofessor [+D, +P]). Thus, each role-play set required three refusals to a person of higher status and three to a person of equal status. In addition, the order of the role plays was randomized for each participant. For the pilot study, all role-play interviews were conducted at an office on the University of Minnesota campus. All participants who agreed to participate in the study signed a consent form. A male Mexican speaker of Spanish served as the native Spanish speaking interlocutor for the Mexican group and a male speaker of American English interacted with the American group. The oral interview was divided into two sessions that were both tape recorded: the role-play and the verbal report interviews. Each participant was given a card which described a situation in his native language and asked him to engage in a role-play conversation with the Mexican or the American interlocutor. Immediately following the role-play interview, the audio tape was replayed for each participant and the researcher car-

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ried out the verbal report interview for both groups. Verbal report interviews were administered in Spanish to the Mexican group and in English to the American group. The verbal probes used during these interviews asked questions regarding the degree of politeness employed when refusing, the use of directness versus indirectness, the perception of insistence in the participant’s home country, and cultural aspects of the speech act of refusals in both societies. Each oral interview, including both components, lasted approximately 45–60 minutes. Both role plays and verbal reports were later transcribed for analysis.

3.4.2 Results of the pilot study As a result of the pilot study, the following observations were noted with respect to the representativeness of the sample: at the time of the study, all of the Mexican participants were living in the United States (mean length of residence: 2.10 years). During the verbal report interview, some Mexicans reported that they felt that their speech act behavior had been influenced to some extent by the U.S. culture. Frequently, their verbal reports consisted of a comparison between Mexican and American speech act behaviors. In fact, they indicated that some of the roleplay situations had occurred to them while they resided in the United States in the course of their interactions with American professors or friends. It appeared that contact with Americans and their residence in the United States had influenced their social perceptions and speech act behavior with regard to the act of refusals. Further, most of the participants were from Mexico City and their speech act behavior was similar. Only the speech act behavior of the subject from northern Mexico (Monterrey) was not consistent with the rest of the sample (i.e., this speaker was more direct and less willing to negotiate during the conversation). During the verbal report interview, he said that people in Monterrey tend to be direct when refusing invitations, requests, or suggestions from friends or from someone of higher status (i.e., boss). Similarly, some problems were observed regarding the contextual information provided in the six target role-play prompts. For example, after reading the situation some participants were ‘unclear’ about certain aspects of the relationship between the interlocutors and mentioned during the verbal reports that more specific information was needed. Participants, specifically Mexicans, wanted more specific information regarding the nature of the relationship between themselves and the friend, boss or professor in order to determine the appropriate degree of familiarity or formality with those individuals. They mentioned that their responses would have varied depending on whether their relationship with the friend or boss was close or distant.


In light of the insufficient contextual information in the role-play prompts reported by participants, the descriptions of the role-play situations were modified to include enriched role-play scenarios. For example, the degree of familiarity between the participants (i.e., degree of social distance) was clarified and a more complete description of the context of the communicative event was provided. With respect to the authenticity of the role-play situations, most participants indicated that they had encountered these situations in the past and that they considered them representative of both the Mexican and U.S. cultures. A few participants said that they had not experienced certain situations, but they still considered them authentic because they had happened to their friends or classmates. Of the six refusal situations, the one in which most participants reported that in real life they would have agreed rather than refused, was the situation in which they were supposed to refuse to lend their notes to a classmate. Most participants reported that it was common among university students to request to borrow notes and this had either happened to them or to their friends, classmates, or roommates. In summary, due to the acceptability and authenticity of these refusal situations among students in Mexico and the United States, the same role-play topics were maintained in the present investigation. The verbal report interview included different types of verbal probes relating to cognition, intention, planning, and evaluation (Cohen 1998; Ericsson & Simon 1993). Some questions used in the pilot study were reworded because a few participants were unsure as to what information was being elicited. For instance, some yes/no questions (e.g., ‘Do you consider this response polite?’) were changed to questions which elicited answers expressing degree, such as “to what extent…” The verbal probes elicited information about the participants’ social perceptions of the speech act of refusals in different contexts. Further, in the pilot study a different number of verbal probes was used for each group making the task incomparable between the two groups. As a result, the verbal report probes were modified and standardized so that each participant was asked the same questions. This allowed for comparability between groups in the final study. With respect to the classification of strategies, the data from the 120 role plays obtained from the 20 participants (10 Americans; 10 Mexicans) in the pilot study were fully transcribed and analyzed in terms of the strategies that constitute the speech act of refusals. The analysis of the data helped the researcher to identify the various strategies employed between the two groups and provided a preliminary classification system of the speech act set. The strategies identified in the pilot data, from both Mexicans and Americans, were then compared to previous classification systems for refusals (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991; Beebe et al. 1990; Chen et al. 1995; García 1992; Iwata 1999; Rubin 1983). Based on the strategies identified in the data of the pilot study and in previous literature, the current

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study adopted a modified classification system and examined the refusal data as pragmatic strategies as manifestations of relational work (Section 3.6). In general, the pilot test helped the researcher verify the authenticity of the role-play situations, the clarity of the directions and context for the role-play task, and the clarity, precision, and organization of the verbal probes during the verbal report interview. Most importantly, the role-play data examined in the pilot study provided the researcher with a broader and more specific classification system of pragmatic strategies organized along a continuum of directness. The pilot test was also helpful for calculating the time spent with each participant during the role play and the verbal report session. As a result, most of the verbal probes were reworded to be more precise and were stated in the form of degree-eliciting questions, rather than yes/no questions. The verbal probe questionnaire adopted for the present study is outlined in the next section. Overall, based on the observations noted above, the organization of the current investigation, described below, was modified to overcome the limitations noted in the pilot study.

3.5

Data collection procedures for the current study

3.5.1 Role-play scenarios used in the present study The role-play set for the current investigation was comprised of six experimental refusal prompts and four distractor items (two apologies, one compliment, one complaint).10 The situations used in the pilot study (mean number of words: 51.6 words) were enhanced for the current study in order to provide the interlocutors who performed the refusals with sufficient and detailed information regarding the context of the interaction; specifically, information concerning the relationship between the speakers, such as social distance, social power, characteristics of the social setting, length of acquaintance, gender, and age. The six refusal situations and the four distractor items used in the present study are shown in Appendix IA for the English data (mean number of words for each situation: 130.5)

10. The purpose of the four distractor items was to familiarize the participants with the format of the role-play interactions. The first, fourth, sixth, and ninth role-play prompts shown in Appendices IA and IB, served as distractors so that no more than two critical items followed each other during the data collection. Of these, the first item used as distractor at each level of social status (items 1, 6 in Appendices IA and IB) was intended to minimize the anxiety of the participants at the beginning of the interaction and to reduce the effects of the Observer’s Paradox (Duranti 1997).


and Appendix IB for the Mexican data (mean number of words for each situation: 146.5). Items 1 through 5 display the role plays used in situations of higher status (critical items: Farewell, Bookstore, Advisor), and items 6 through 10 show the role plays used in situations of equal status (critical items: Notes, Birthday, Bar). The description of each refusal situation was based on two variables: social power (+P or –P) and social distance (+D or –D). While the conceptualization of power and distance varies across cultures and among researchers (Fraser 1990; Spencer-Oatey 1996), these variables are used in the present study as follows: Distance is understood in terms of the degree of familiarity, close (– Distance) or distant (+ Distant), between the participants as specified in the role-play descriptions. Power, on the other hand, refers to the “vertical disparity between the participants in a hierarchical structure” (Scollon & Scollon 2001: 52). Based on these variables, the six refusal situations were classified according to the three face systems proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2001) (hierarchical, solidarity, deference) and included refusals to two invitations (Farewell, Birthday), to two suggestions (Advisor, Bar), and to two requests (Bookstore, Notes). The six refusal situations employed in the current study are briefly described below (See Appendices IA and IB for full description of each role play situation): Formal situations: • Farewell: An employee refuses a boss’ invitation to attend a farewell party (+D, +P) • Bookstore: An employee refuses a boss’ request to stay late at work (+D, +P) • Advisor: A student refuses a professor’s advice to take an extra class (+D, +P) Informal situations: • Notes: A student refuses a request from a classmate to borrow his notes (+D, –P) • Birthday: A friend refuses another friend’s invitation to attend his birthday party (–D, –P) • Bar: A friend refuses another friend’s suggestion to skip class to go to a bar (–D, –P) The six role-play situations employed in the current investigation are listed according to face system in Figure 3. According to Figure 3, three of the role plays represented situations in a hierarchical face system between status unequals: i) an employee refuses a boss’ invitation to attend a farewell party (Farewell); ii) An employee refuses a boss’ request to stay late at work (Bookstore); and, iii) a student refuses a professor’s

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Face System

Status of Refuser Relative to Interlocutor

Distance

Power

Hierarchical

Lower: Employee-Boss (Farewell)

+

+

Hierarchical

Lower: Employee-Boss (Bookstore)

+

+

Hierarchical

Lower: Student-Advisor (Advisor)

+

+

Deference

Equal: Classmate-Classmate (Notes)

+

-

Solidarity

Equal: Friend-Friend (Birthday)

-

-

Solidarity

Equal: Classmate-Classmate (Bar)

-

-

Figure 3. Distribution of situations by face system

suggestion to take an extra class (Advisor). The other three represented interactions between status equals: one situation in a deference face system, iv) a student refuses to lend his notes to a classmate with whom he rarely interacts (Notes), and two in a solidarity face system, v) a friend refuses a friend’s invitation to a birthday party (Birthday), and vi) a friend refuses a friend’s suggestion to skip class to go to a bar (Bar). All oral interviews were conducted at a private office at the respective universities. A mini high-fidelity microphone was used to record the data. The tape-recorder and the microphone were placed out of sight in order to minimize the participants’ anxiety at being recorded. In addition, to make the role-play situations as authentic as possible, the offices where the interviews took place were adapted, as much as possible, to parallel the role-play situation in natural settings. For instance, in the student-advisor situation, the professor sat behind a desk in a real professor’s office, whereas for the informal interviews, the student sat away from the desk on the same side as the interviewer and some props were added to make the setting more informal (e.g., soda cans and cafeteria food to approximate a cafeteria-like setting [Birthday, Notes, Bar]). Likewise, each research assistant wore clothing appropriate to the situation. For example, for the formal situations (advisor [professor] and boss [Farewell, Bookstore]), the professor who collected the data wore formal clothes commonly used at these institutions (e.g., a suit jacket) by people in these roles. In addition to being a university professor at this university, this professor worked as a part-time job at a public institution in the city of Tlaxcala where he served as the manager of his office; thus, his role as a professor and boss for these role-play situations is based on his everyday interactions in the workplace. For the informal situations, the college student wore casual clothes appropriate to the situation (e.g., a t-shirt and a baseball cap). Overall, it was believed that by providing a simulated natural environment during the role-play session, the data obtained would more closely approximate authentic discourse.


It should also be noted that the researcher was present in the room, albeit in the background, during the role-play interview to observe the interaction during the interviews and to monitor the recording. Immediately following the role-play session, the research assistant interviewer who initiated the refusals (student, professor) left the room as the researcher conducted the verbal report interview with each participant. Each oral interview, including the role plays and the verbal reports, lasted approximately 55 minutes among the Mexicans, and 35–40 minutes among the Americans. During the role-play task, each group of participants interacted with two different interlocutors from their own home country depending on the level of formality of the situation. Thus, the Mexicans interacted with a college professor (Age: 45) for the formal situations (Farewell, Advisor, Bookstore) and with a college student (Age: 23) for the informal situations (Birthday, Notes, Bar). Similarly, the American group interacted with two native speakers of American English. A university professor (age: 40) conducted the interviews for the formal situations and a fifth-year university student (age: 22) participated in the informal situations. The Mexican and American interlocutors were chosen from the same university as the participants in Mexico and the United States, respectively, and thus were members of the same speech community as the participants. Prior to the role-play interviews, the four research assistants were trained by the researcher to ensure that each assistant used the appropriate register to perform the invitation, request, or suggestion. Assistants were instructed to interact as naturally as possible during the role plays. Three days before the role-play interviews were conducted with the participants, the researcher met with the assistants and reviewed the description of each situation in detail; then, the assistants practiced each role-play with the researcher in order to familiarize them with the situations.

3.5.2 Retrospective verbal reports In addition to role-play data, which represent the primary corpus in this investigation, the results from retrospective verbal reports were analyzed as complementary data in order to corroborate the results of the production data by examining the perceptions of refusals among Mexicans and Americans. The role plays were audio-taped and after the role-play task was completed, the tape for each situation was played back for each participant. The researcher then administered the verbal report probes, which addressed the factors which contributed to the responses participants produced in each situation, in English (Americans) or Spanish (Mexicans). These probes referred to three specific aspects utilized in the production

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Cognition

x

What were you paying attention to when you refused in this situation?

(In)directness

x

To what extent was it important for you to be direct or indirect when you refused in this situation?

Insistence to an

x

invitation

After declining the invitation from a boss (Farewell) or a friend (Birthday), did you expect an insistence from him? If he did insist, how did it make you feel?

x

Do you consider an insistence rude or acceptable in your culture?

Figure 4. Verbal probe questionnaire used during the retrospective verbal interview

of the speech act: cognition, degree of (in)directness, and the perception regarding an insistence after declining an invitation. Figure 4 shows the verbal probes administered to each group during the verbal report interview. Overall, it has been observed that by examining verbal report data, one “may learn what the respondents actually perceived about each situation (e.g., what they perceived about the relative role status of the interlocutors) and how their perceptions influenced their responses” (Cohen 2004: 321). In the current study, an analysis of the participants’ social perceptions of politeness will further our understanding of metapragmatic politeness1, specifically, what Mexicans and Americans perceive politeness to be in their respective cultural context.

3.6

Pragmatic strategies as manifestations of relational work

3.6.1 Pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals In this study, a pragmatic strategy, or strategy for short, refers to a sentential form (i.e., such as a word, a phrase, or an entire sentence) or utterance form that may consist of a word, a phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of sentences (i.e., a portion of discourse with a communicative intention) which a speaker selects on a particular ocassion, and which is recognized by an interlocutor in order to convey pragmatic intent. Pragmatic strategies promote relational work and are negotiated and renegotiated by the interlocutors so as to construct discourse. Under the appropriate circumstances, some of these pragmatic strategies may be open to a polite interpretation by the interlocutor. Overall, the classification system of the pragmatic strategies used when performing a refusal employed herein was based on a direct-indirect continuum and included three categories: direct refusals, indirect refusals, and strategies used as adjuncts to refusals. While direct refusals included instances where the speaker expresses his inability to comply by means of negative propositions (e.g., ‘no’, ‘I can’t’, ‘it’s im-


possible’), indirect refusals included various linguistic strategies by which an invitation, a request, or a suggestion were indirectly refused. The indirect continuum encompassed 12 different strategies: mitigated refusal, reason/explanation, indefinite reply, regret/apology, alternative, postponement, repetition of a portion of previous utterance, request for information, set condition for future or past acceptance, wish, promise to comply, and preparator. Finally, the strategies employed as adjuncts to refusals comprised five strategies that express positive supportive facework and were utilized to preface or to follow a refusal response: positive opinion, willingness, expression of gratitude, agreement, and empathy. In general, these strategies should be seen as linguistic expressions that are available to interlocutors for the purpose of carrying out facework during social interaction and as a means of expressing various forms of relational work. Below is a description of the pragmatic strategies used in a refusal response by the Mexicans and Americans who participated in this study, followed by definitions and examples taken from the data.

3.6.1.1 Direct refusals According to Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, the direct verbal style refers to “verbal messages that embody and invoke speakers’ true intentions in terms of their wants, needs, and desires in the discourse process” (1988: 100). This corresponds to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) ‘on-record strategy’ with respect to the precision and clarity of the communicative intention. In this study, the directness continuum is comprised of strategies that convey an explicit message of the refusal response. A direct refusal was often realized by means of a flat ‘no’, as in (1a) or negation of a proposition, as in (1b). Definitions and examples of each strategy are shown below. (1) a. b. c.

No, I totally made plans with my family, I gotta go out I can’t come to the party Me es muy difícil/imposible ir a la fiesta (‘It’s very difficult / impossible for me to attend the party’)

Example (1a) illustrates a flat ‘no’ response which is characterized by the lack of internal modification. The examples of the ‘negation of a proposition’ strategy shown in (1b–c) contain an element that negates the proposition used in the invitation, request, or suggestion. Negation can be expressed syntactically by employing the negative particle ‘not’ (or no in Spanish) or its elliptical form ‘I can’t’ (1b), or, lexically, by using any word or morpheme (impossible) that directly negates a proposition (1c). By using this strategy, the speaker expresses his inability to accept an invitation, a request, or a suggestion.

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3.6.1.2 Indirect refusals According to Leech, on the indirectness scale “illocutions are ordered with respect to the path (in terms of means-ends analysis) connecting the illocutionary act to its illocutionary goal” (1983: 123). Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey state that the indirect verbal style “refers to verbal messages that camouflage and conceal speakers’ true intentions in terms of their wants, needs, and goals in the discourse situation” (1988: 100). In the current study, the indirectness continuum was comprised of 12 different strategies often employed to express relational work. Definitions of these strategies and examples are included below. Mitigated refusal Mitigated refusals are expressions which are internally modified by hedges that reduce the negative effects that a direct refusal might have had on the interlocutor. Internal modification included refusals that used the conditional form to convey politeness in specific situations, impersonal expressions (e.g., ‘se’ impersonal in Spanish [roughly equivalent to ‘one’ in English]) that have the effect of creating distance between the speaker and the content of a proposition expressed, or by means of mitigators such as mental state predicates (e.g., creer ‘to believe’, pensar ‘to think’), adverbs (desafortunadamente ‘unfortunately’) or degree modifiers (un poco ‘a little’, un tanto ‘somewhat’). Examples of this strategy are shown in (2): (2) a. b. c. d. e. f. e.

So, I think probably I’m not gonna take the class Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend your farewell party Creo que no será posible (‘I don’t think it’s going to be possible’) Pues, mire, yo probablemente no quiero tomar este seminario (‘Well, look, I probably don’t want to take this seminar’) Como que no quiero tomar esa clase (‘It’s sort of like I don’t want to take that class’) No podría asistir (‘I wouldn’t be able to attend’) No se puede (Not SE-IMPERSONAL can-3RD SINGULAR PRESENT INDICATIVE) ‘It’s not possible’


Reason/Explanation When this strategy is used, the respondent indirectly refuses an invitation, request, or suggestion by providing excuses, accounts, or explanations. The account employed to express a refusal may be specific or general: A general reason/explanation does not include specific details as to why the individual cannot comply with an invitation, a request, or a suggestion (example (3a)). In contrast, a specific reason/explanation provides detailed information that indirectly mitigates the refusal (example (3b)). For purposes of presentation of the data, specificic and general reasons were both coded under the category ‘reason/explanation’; the distinction will be addressed in the analysis of the data (Chapter 4). Examples of this strategy are shown in (3): (3) a. Tengo planes / Tengo un compromiso (‘I have plans / I have a commitment’) b. I am having dinner with my parents who are visiting for the weekend

Indefinite reply By using an indefinite reply to refuse an invitation, a request, or a suggestion, the speaker’s intentional message remains vague, uncertain, or undecided. In addition, an indefinite reply often shows uncertainty on the part of the refuser and the outcome of the interaction is left open or indefinite, as shown in the examples in (4).

(4) a. b. c. d. e.

Oh, I don’t know if I can come to your party No sé si pueda llegar a las ocho a tu fiesta (‘I don’t know if I can come to your party at eight’) No sé qué clases tomar (‘I don’t know what classes to take’) Voy a tratarle, ya veremos (‘I’ll try to, we’ll see’) Deja ver si puedo, no te aseguro nada (‘let me see if I can, I can’t promise you anything’)

Apology/Regret According to Leech, apologies “express regret for some offence committed by s[peaker] against h[earer] – and there is no implication that s[peaker] has benefited from the offence” (1983: 124–125). In the case of refusals, employing apologies,

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expressions of regret, or asking for forgiveness function as indirect refusals that may be considered manifestations of relational work and expressions that may be open for polite interpretation. In the current study, the categories of apology, regret, and asking for forgiveness were collapsed under apology/regret. Examples from the data are displayed in (5): (5) a. b. c. d. e. f.

I’m really sorry I can’t come I apologize, but uh my shift says I’m done at 7:00 p.m. Discúlpeme, pero no va a ser posible (‘I’m sorry, but it’s not going to be possible’) Lo siento (mucho) / De verdad lo siento (‘I’m so / very / really sorry’) Me da mucha pena, pero no puedo asistir (‘I feel really bad, but I can’t attend’) Por favor, perdóneme, pero no será posible (‘Please, forgive me, but it won’t be possible’)

Alternative The respondent uses this strategy to suggest alternatives or possibilities in order to negotiate face with the interlocutor and arrive at a mutual agreement. When refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion, an alternative is used so as not to offend the interlocutor, or as a means of directing the conversation away from the request, invitation, or suggestion. Alternatives are often employed to mitigate a direct refusal and to promote relational work, as in the examples shown in (6): (6) a. Why don’t we go out for dinner next week? b. ¿Qué le parece si nos quedamos a hacer, digamos, la mitad de trabajo y el lunes tempranísimo estaría yo aquí para continuar con lo que falta? Podría ser una posibilidad. (‘How about if we agree to do, let’s say, half the work and then on Monday, really early, I would be here to work on whatever’s left? That might be a possibility’)

Postponement When postponing a refusal, the speaker does not want to explicitly make a commitment and, therefore, puts off an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. This strategy is employed to negotiate face across the interaction, to express relational work, and also to delay a refusal. Likewise, this strategy can be considered an


instance of verbal avoidance because postponing a refusal distracts the interlocutor’s attention away from a dispreferred response. Examples of ‘postponement’ can be seen in in (7): (7) a. Um, is it possible I could come in early on Monday? b. ¿Qué posibilidades habría de que pueda posponer la clase, digamos, para el semestre entrante? (‘What possibility would there be to put the class off, let’s say, until next semester?’) c. Voy a pensarlo y luego le digo. (‘I’ll think about it and I’ll let you know later’)

Repetition of part of previous discourse When this strategy is employed, the speaker repeats a portion of the previous discourse mentioned in the interlocutor’s invitation, request, or suggestion. This serves to distract attention away from the interlocutor and delays a dispreferred response. In many cases the use of repetition of part of the previous discourse represents a verbal avoidance strategy and is used by the speaker to buy time to think of an appropriate excuse. Similarly, the repetition of part of a previous utterance softens a refusal response and reflects initial interest in the proposition on the part of the interlocutor. An example of this strategy is shown in (8): (A: Person extending invitation to a birthday party; B: person refusing) (8) A: B: A: B:

Check this out, next Friday my house 8 p.m., my 21st birthday party, man, all the old crew’s gonna be there, it’s gonna be fantastic, you gotta come  what?, next Friday? [← Repetition] next Friday, 8pm I’ll tell ya what, I can’t, man.

Request for additional information In using this strategy, the speaker asks for information not previously mentioned in the addressee’s invitation, request, or suggestion and shows interest in both the interlocutor and his/her proposition. This strategy is also considered to be an instance of verbal avoidance because it delays the refusal response and diverts the attention away from the interlocutor. In using this strategy, the speaker promotes

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the negotiation of face in order to arrive at a mutual agreement. Examples of this strategy are displayed in (9): (9) a. b. c.

What time is the party? Where is it? Is it at your apartment? …pero, pues – no sé, ¿quién – quiénes van a ir? (‘…but, well – I don’t know, who – who all is going to be there?’)

Set condition for future or past acceptance This strategy functions as an indirect response and may be used to refuse or to put off an invitation, a request, or a suggestion by creating a hypothetical condition under which acceptance would occur (future) or would have occurred (past). If the condition for refusing refers to the past (10a), the refusal is expressed indirectly with the person refusing not complying with the act (invitation, request, suggestion), whereas if the condition is realized in the future (10b), the person refusing may or may not complete the act. Examples of this strategy are shown in (10a–b): (10) a. b.

If you had asked me earlier, I would have accepted Si consigo quien me dé aventón a tu fiesta, llego después de trabajar (‘If I find someone to give me a ride to your party, I’ll be there after work’)

Wish This strategy communicates the participant’s desire or wish to accept an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. It is often employed as a polite refusal response to express supportive facework and to soften the negative effects of a direct refusal. Examples of this strategy are shown in (11):

(11) a. I wish I could stay and work for two more hours, maybe next time. b. Ojalá pudiera ir, pero ya tengo planes (‘I wish I were able to go, but I already have plans’) Promise to comply By using this strategy the refuser does not want to make any commitment to accept an invitation, a request, or a suggestion, although s/he may try to do so at some point in the future. This strategy, found almost exclusively in the Mexican


data, is used most commonly when refusing an invitation, as in the examples shown in (12): (12) a. b.

Voy a tratar de estar en tu fiesta, pero no te prometo nada (‘I’m gonna try to be at your party, but I can’t promise you anything’) Voy a procurar darme una vueltecita aunque sea para darle su abrazo allá y, este, pues para que los muchachos vean que estoy con ellos, y que lo apreciamos, ¿no? y compartir aunque sea un momentito… (‘I’m gonna try to find a way around it, even if it’s to get there just to give you a hug and, um, so that the guys see that I’m part of the team and how much we appreciate you, right? and to be a part of it, even if it’s just for a few minutes…’)

Preparator Preparators are utterances by which the speaker prepares his/her hearer for the ensuing refusal by announcing in some way that he/she will refuse an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. This strategy functions as a pre-sequence and is often employed to preface and soften an upcoming refusal, as seen in the examples in (13): (13) a. b. c. d. e. f.

I’ll be honest with you, I really would prefer not to I’ll tell you what, I’d love to go, but you know, I’ve got something else You know what? I’m gonna be out of town, and I just can’t ¿Sabes qué? no puedo (‘You know what? I can’t’) Lo que pasa es que ya tengo un compromiso. (‘The thing is that I already have a commitment’) El problema es que no puedo quedarme (‘The problem is that I can’t stay’)

3.6.1.3 Adjuncts to refusals Strategies employed as adjuncts to refusals during an invitation, request, or suggestion function as external modifications to the refusal head act. These strategies are manifestations of relational work, and given the appropriate circumstances and excessive politic behavior, they may be open to a polite interpretation. This category comprises five strategies that highlight the speakers’ involvement with the interlocutor: positive opinion, willingness, gratitude/appreciation, agreement, and empathy. Definitions and examples of these strategies are provided below.

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Positive opinion During the act of refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion, the refuser provides positive expressions before or after a refusal head act in order to maintain harmony with the interlocutor. Examples of this strategy include expressions of well-wishing or any other positive comment or remark on the part of the refuser, as shown in (14): (14) a. b. c.

That’s a good idea, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it Congratulations on your promotion, but… Hijo, jefe, felicidades, ya sabe que sí se le desea, se le desea, lo mejor para que, y ojalá Ud. siga Ud. ascendiendo más, porque sí se lo merece Ud., qué bueno, pero oiga… (‘Wow, boss, congratulations, you already know that you are really wished, you are wished all the best so that, and hopefully you, you will continue to be promoted because you really deserve it, that’s great, but here’s the thing…’)

Willingness By using this strategy the refuser indicates his/her willingness to comply with an invitation, request, or suggestion. This strategy functions as a means of expressing involvement with the interlocutor. Examples are shown in (15): (15) a. I’d love to, but.. b. Bueno, pues de hecho este – me encantaría ir a celebrarlo, pero… (‘Well, in fact um – I would love to go to celebrate it, but… )

Gratitude/Appreciation Expressions of gratitude/appreciation are used to express relational work with an interlocutor when refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. If this strategy is used in excess when refusing, it may be open to a polite interpretation. Examples of this strategy are displayed in (16): (16) a. b. c.

Thanks for the invitation, but I already have plans I really appreciate the offer, but I have prior engagements Bueno de antemano le doy las gracias, señor (‘Well, sir, I thank you in advance’)


Agreement These are expressions which indicate a partial or weak agreement in relation to the opinion expressed when refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion. Partial agreements are manifestations of relational work and express involvement with the point of view of the interlocutor by showing initial interest in an invitation, request, or suggestion. This strategy is often employed to preface a refusal sequence. Examples of this strategy are shown in (17): (17) a. b. c.

Yes/okay, but… It’s fine, but... Entiendo perfectamente lo que dices, pero… (‘I understand exactly what you’re saying, but…)

Empathy During the act of refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion, the refuser may empathize with the interlocutor and may show involvement with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. In the examples in (18), an employee uses this strategy to initiate a refusal to the boss’ request to stay at work late. (18) a. I understand you are in a pinch, but... b. Es comprensible la situación en la que nos encontramos de verdad, pero… (‘The situation that we find ourselves in is really understandable, but…’)

3.6.2 Internal modification of a refusal sequence: Expressions of epistemic modality In addition to the pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals, a refusal head act can be internally modified by means of various pragmalinguistic expressions that weaken or mitigate the negative effects of a direct refusal, that is, expressions of epistemic modality by which speakers convey a lack of commitment, hesitation, or uncertainty during a refusal response. Subjectivity, tentativeness, and the degree of commitment in expressing a refusal are crucial characteristics of epistemic expressions during the negotiation of face (Coates 1987; Nuyts 2001; Wierzbicka 2006). For the current study, a refusal response was often mitigated by the following expressions: mental state predicates (‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘I guess’), modal adverbs (e.g., ‘probably’, ‘unfortunately’), degree modifiers (‘It’s kind of/sort of a problem’, como que me es un poco difícil ‘it’s kind of difficult for

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me’), and tag questions in turn-final position (‘Unfortunately, I can’t come, is that okay?’; bueno, pero, no tendría que ser necesariamente o forzoso y ahorita en este semestre, ¿o si? ‘well, but it wouldn’t have to necessarily or obligatorily be right now in this semester, or would it?’). While mental state predicates may occur in various parts of the utterance (initial, middle, or final position), in the current study most of the epistemic verb phrases were realized in utterance-initial position. Similarly, the epistemic adverbs generally appeared at the beginning or in the middle of a turn. Overall, these epistemic expressions were included in the current analysis because they tend to minimize the illocutionary force of what is said and to protect both the speaker’s and hearer’s face in situations where the topic is sensitive, such as a refusal to an invitation, to a request, or to a suggestion.

3.7

Data analysis

The 240 refusal interactions from both Mexicans and Americans were sequentially analyzed according to the classification system of pragmatic strategies that participants utilize to carry out relational work when negotiating a refusal (Section 3.6). The role-play interactions were tape-recorded and fully transcribed according to a modified transcription system based on the conventions provided in Jefferson (2004) which can be found at the beginning of this book. In this study, the examination of the refusal interactions included an analysis of both the speaker’s and the addressee’s speech behavior. The role-play data were analyzed with respect to the preference for pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech act set of refusals (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals [Section 3.6.1]) and expressions which were used to internally weaken or mitigate a refusal response (mental state predicates, modal adverbs, degree modifiers, and tag questions [Section 3.6.2]). A contrastive analysis of the pragmatic strategies used by Mexicans and Americans was conducted with respect to the frequency, content, and distribution of strategies across the interaction. To control inter-coder reliability, the coding of the pragmatic strategies and the expressions used to mitigate a refusal (internal modification) for each group was performed by the researcher and verified by four trained male coders: two native speakers of Mexican Spanish and two native speakers of U.S. English. Both coders in each group independently verified the researcher’s coding of the data in its entirety. Overall, the coding of all of the coders coincided with the researcher’s original coding in nearly 95% of the analyzed data. In cases where discrepancies were noted, the researcher discussed each case with each coder and a consensus was reached.


The role-play data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS), version 14.0. Paired samples t-tests were employed to analyze strategy use, levels of directness and indirectness when negotiating a refusal in formal and informal situations (pragmatic strategies) and the degree of tentativeness or subjectivity in the refusal response (internal modification). For both the analysis of the pragmatic strategies and mitigators (internal modification), in addition to the frequency of each strategy, the number of participants that employed each strategy in each situation is also provided. For all analyses the alpha level was set at .05. Finally, the retrospective verbal report protocols of the 40 participants were analyzed with respect to the following elements: 1) cognitive information that participants attended to during a refusal interaction (cognition); 2) the degree of directness or indirectness perceived during a refusal response; and, 3) the perception regarding an insistence after declining an invitation in Mexico and the United States. The following two chapters present the findings of this study. Chapter 4 provides the results for the production data (role-play data) with respect to the preference for the linguistic expressions (pragmatic strategies and epistemic expressions [internal modification]) selected by the Mexicans and Americans to negotiate refusals in situations of equal and unequal status. Next, Chapter 5 reports on the findings of the retrospective verbal reports which were employed to examine the participants’ perceptions of refusals (and politeness) by both groups in all of the situations.

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chapter 4

Results Relational work and linguistic politeness: The negotiation of refusals by Mexicans and Americans

4.1

Introduction

This chapter examines the similarities and differences in the realization patterns of refusals in Mexican Spanish and US English in situations of equal and unequal status in response to invitations, requests, and suggestions. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the framework adopted to examine the interactional data in the present study is relational work, which refers to the work individuals invest to negotiate face in social interaction (Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2005). Although linguistic expressions are not inherently polite or impolite, if they are used in excess in specific situations (positively marked behavior), they may be open to a polite interpretation. The results of the interactional data gathered from the six situations will be presented first with respect to the overall frequency and distribution of the linguistic strategies (pragmatic strategies: direct and indirect refusals, and adjuncts to refusals [see Section 3.6.1]) employed to negotiate a refusal (4.2). In addition, to examine the issue of individual variability, I will show the strategies used by each participant across the situations (4.3). Next, the results of the realization patterns of refusals will be presented for both groups for each situation and according to three face systems (hierarchical [+P], deference [+D], and solidarity [–D]) (Scollon & Scollon 2001), followed by a sequential analysis of the refusal interactions (4.4). Further, to analyze the internal structure of a refusal sequence, I examine four expressions of epistemic modality that serve to weaken or mitigate a refusal response (4.5). The last section of this chapter presents the concluding remarks with respect to the findings of the study (4.6).


4.2

Refusal strategies as manifestations of relational work

Table 2 shows the frequency and distribution of the 18 pragmatic strategies that were identified in the role-play data among the Mexicans and Americans across the six situations. The Table consists of direct (one strategy) and indirect (12 strategies) refusals, and strategies employed as adjuncts to refusals (five strategies) (see examples of each strategy in Section 3.6.1). Each strategy includes the percentage (%), frequency (f), mean (M), and standard deviation (SD). The analysis of the 240 role-play interactions among the Mexicans (n = 120) and the Americans (n = 120) yielded a total of 2,491 linguistic strategies. Of these, 53% of the strategies (or 1,310) were identified in the Mexican data, and 47% (or 1,181) in the American data. Some of these strategies were employed as head acts (e.g., ‘I’d love to come to the party, but I can’t, sorry’) and the majority as Table 2. Overall distribution of pragmatic strategies among Americans and Mexicans (n = 2,491 strategies) Strategy Direct Refusals Indirect Refusals Reason/Explanation Mitigated refusal Indefinite reply Apology/Regret Alternative Postponement Repetition of previous utterance Request for information Set condition for future/past acceptance Preparator Promise to comply Wish Adjuncts to Refusals Positive opinion Willingness Gratitude Agreement Empathy Total

Americans % (f)

Mean SD

Mexicans % (f)

Mean S.D.

10

(118) 5.90 5.00

11.4

(149) 7.45 5.72

24.6 4.2 6.4 4.8 7.6 3 2.2

(290) (50) (76) (57) (90) (36) (26)

14.50 2.50 3.80 2.85 4.50 1.80 1.30

3.95 1.70 2.50 1.60 2.56 1.43 1.26

25 8.5 7.7 4.9 1.8 6.3 2.6

(327) (112) (101) (64) (24) (83) (34)

16.35 5.60 5.05 3.20 1.20 4.15 1.70

7.3 .8

(86) ( 9)

4.30 2.71 .45 .60

4.3 1.8

(57) (24)

2.85 2.49 1.20 1.28

1.7 .1 1.1

(20) (1) (13)

1 1.91 .05 .22 .65 .98

6.4 .4 .1

(84) (5) (1)

4.20 3.42 .25 .55 .05 .22

5.5 3.8 .3 12.3 4.2

(65) (45) (4) (145) (50) 1,181

3.25 2.25 .20 7.25 2.50

4.4 2.2 3.1 8.2 .8

(57) (29) (40) (108) (11) 1,310

2.85 1.45 2.00 5.40 .55

1.94 2.14 .41 3.53 2.06

4.73 3.71 4.71 3.73 1.70 1.98 1.72

2.58 1.66 1.58 1.84 .75

Chapter 4. Results: Relational work and linguistic politeness

supportive moves (external modification: strategies that prefaced or followed a refusal head act). (An analysis of the strategies used as head acts in each situation is provided in Section 4.4). As can be seen from the means in Table 2, the 18 strategies were employed with different degrees of preference within each group and between the groups and show a wide range of variation. This table illustrates that for both groups some of these strategies were employed in relatively high proportions during the negotiation of a refusal (e.g., reasons/explanations [25% by each group] and direct refusals [Americans: 10%; Mexicans 11.4%]). Other strategies were used moderately (e.g., apology/regret and positive opinion [approximately 5% by each group]), and still fewer strategies were utilized infrequently by participants in each group (e.g., wish, promise to comply [1% or less]). Overall, the numeric results in Table 2 tell us how frequently or infrequently each strategy was employed by each group when refusing invitations, requests, or suggestions from a person of equal or higher status. Table 3 shows the five most frequently used strategies by the Mexicans and Americans in descending order of preference (f = frequency of strategy use; % = percentage). For both groups, providing reasons or explanations was the preferred strategy across the six situations when refusing a person of equal or unequal status. The preference for reasons/explanations indicates positive facework or involvement with the interlocutor, in that offering reasons/explanations or justifications when refusing an invitation, a request, or a suggestion is “a way of implying ‘I can help you’ or ‘you can help me’, and, [assumes] cooperation” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 128). Further, among the Americans, a refusal response was also often expressed by means of expressions of agreement (pre-refusal) (second most frequently used strategy), a direct refusal (third most frequently used strategy), alternatives, and requests for information. In contrast, the individuals in the Mexican group opted for direct refusals (second most frequently used strategy), mitigated refusals, indefinite replies, and expressions of agreement. Examples of the strategies in Table 3 are provided below for each group in comparable situations. Table 3. Most frequently used strategies by Americans and Mexicans to express relational work Americans % f Reason/Explanation Agreement Direct refusal Alternative Request for information

24.6 12.3 10 7.6 7.3

290 145 118 90 86

Mexicans % f Reason/Explanation Direct refusal Mitigated refusal Agreement Indefinite reply

25 11.4 8.5 8.2 7.7

327 149 112 108 101

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(The [a] examples come from the American group and the [b] examples from the Mexican group): (1) Direct Refusal (Bar: A student refuses a friend’s suggestion to go to a bar, –P, –D)

a. I wish could, but I can’t – I gotta go to class (American #5)

b. ¿Sabes qué? No puedo ir, porque… (Mexican #5) (‘you know what?, I can’t go because …’)

(2) Mitigated refusal (Advisor: A student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class, +P, +D) a. …um, so I don’t think I’m gonna be able to take that class … (American #12) b. Lo que pasa que – este Epistemología se me encima, se empalma con – este – con Geografía Histórica y pues no – no creo dejar Geografía Histórica por ésa, entonces este – pues no – no sé, no – no podría… (Mexican #15) (‘the thing is that – um – I’ve got Epistemiology looming over me, it conflicts with – um – Historical Geography and well I don’t – don’t think I should leave Historical Geography for that, so – um – well I don’t – don’t know I wouldn’t wouldn’t be able to’) (3) Reasons/explanations (Farewell: Employee declines an invitation from his boss, +P, +D) a. Well, sir, uh, I really appreciate the offer, I have prior engagements – I already know the date – uh, I already had scheduled plans… (American #1) b. …y si yo pudiera, pues, estar a, este – a esa hora, yo estaría – pero también en esa hora tengo un un bautizo de – del hijo de mi – de mi hermano, entonces pues no este – no creo que sea posible que llegue yo… (Mexican #7) (‘…and if I were able to, um, to be there at, um – at that time, I would be – but at that time I also have a baptism of – of my brother’s son, so um it’s not um – I don’t think it would be possible for me to get there…’) (4) Alternative (Bookstore: Employee refuses his boss’ request to stay late at work, +P, +D)

a. Uh, what if I stay ‘til 8:00? (Amercian #19)

b. pero ¿qué le parece si nos quedamos a hacer, digamos,


la mitad y el lunes tempranísimo estaría yo aquí para continuar con lo que falta? Podría ser una posibilidad. (Mexican #2) (‘well how about if we stay and do, let’s say, half and then I’d be here really early on Monday to finish what’s left? That might be a possibility.’)

(5) Request for information (Advisor: Student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class, +P, +D)

a. … but do you know um what time [the class] meets or. ..? b.

(American #18) ¿Usted cree que tendría problemas más adelante si no la [la clase] curso? (Mexican #14) (‘do you think that I would have problems in the future if I don’t take it [the class]?)’

(6) Indefinite reply (Notes: Student refuses to lend notes to a classmate (–P, +D) a. Oooh, uh, I don, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can if – ya know –

b.

I really wanna do that – I mean – I guess, uh, ya know… (American #2) Bueno – lo de los apuntes podría, pero pues hay cosas que debes de entender – y y no sé, o sea – yo hago mis apuntes y no sé si les entiendas. (Mexico #17) (‘well –about the notes I could, but then there are things that you should understand – and and I’ don’t know, in other words – I take my notes and I don’t know if you would understand them’.)

(7) Agreement (Birthday: Friend declines a birthday invitation from a friend, –P, –D)

a. Yeah, that sounds so::: kickass, but… (Amercian #5)

b. …Sí, bueno pues estaría bien, pero pues no sé… (Mexican #17) (‘Yeah, well it would be great, but um I don’t know’)

Cross-cultural differences obtained in the use of five indirect strategies (Table 2). For example, Americans mostly expressed refusals indirectly by using alternatives (7.6%, n = 90) and requests for additional information (7.3%, n = 86). These strategies were often utilized to avoid a direct refusal and to delay a refusal across turns (i.e., used as pre/post-sequences). Also, these strategies functioned as a means of verbal avoidance as they diverted the conversation away from the invitation, request, or suggestion. On the other hand, Mexicans tended to express refusals utilizing mitigated refusals (with various degrees of hesitation and tentativeness) (8.5%, n = 112) and indefinite replies (7.7%, n = 101). These strategies (mainly indefinite replies) were often employed to end a refusal sequence and to avoid

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conflict and aggression. Finally, expressions of agreement (positive supportive facework) were found more frequently among the Americans (12.3% [n = 145], second most frequent strategy) than the Mexicans (8.2% [n = 108], fourth most frequent strategy) (Table 3). This strategy was often realized by means of partial agreements (e.g., sí, estoy de acuerdo, pero… ‘yes, I agree, but…’) in turn-initial position to preface a refusal response. Prefacing a refusal response by means of partial agreements delays a refusal and gives the impression that the speaker is being polite with the interlocutor prior to the delivery of a dispreferred response. A t-test comparing the means of strategy use between the groups (Table 2) showed significant differences for seven strategies: four indirect refusals (mitigated refusals, alternatives, postponements, preparators) and three adjuncts to refusals (expressions of gratitude, agreement, empathy). Considering all six situations, the results showed that the Mexican participants employed a significantly higher number of mitigated refusals [t(38) = 3.39, p < .05], postponements [t(38) = 4.3, p < .05], preparators [t(38) = 3.64, p < .05], and expressions of gratitude [t(38) = 4.90, p < .05] than the individuals in the American group (see means and standard deviations in Table 2). In contrast, the Americans utilized a significantly higher number of alternatives [t(38) = –4.79, p < .05], expressions of agreement [t(38) = –2.07, p < .05], and expressions of empathy [t(38) = –3.96, p < .05] than the Mexicans who used them less frequently and in fewer situations (see means and standard deviations in Table 2). Examples of the following strategies are provided below for each group: postponements, preparators, expressions of gratitude, and expressions of empathy: (8) Postponement (Advisor: Student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class, +P, +D) a. Maybe I could take it (the class) another semester, but right now, that’s – that’s pretty much how I feel, it’s not gonna affect my graduation time or anything like that, is it? (American #16) b. … entonces no sé qué conviene si cambiar una materia por otra que me sea más indispensable, pues que haya una que mejor la pueda tomar más adelante – no sé cómo vea, ¿qué me sugiere? (Mexican #15) (‘… so I don’t know if it’s a good idea to switch a class that is more essential for another, well maybe there’s one that would be better to take later – I don’t know what you think, what do you suggest I do?’) (9) Preparators (Notes: Student refuses to lend his classmate his notes, –P, +D)

a. I tell ya what, it’s my policy not to lend notes but, I mean, uh, it’s just I

don’t feel comfortable doing that. (American #7)


b.

Mira, te voy a decir la verdad, este – ahorita se los presté a Lolita – y quién sabe – no ha venido – no ha venido y este – quién sabe si venga, me estaba diciendo su amiga que a lo mejor y no – no va a venir ya, sí se los presté y hasta yo me quedo sin apuntes, pero si es que viene, pues te los doy. (Mexican #14) (‘listen, to tell you the truth, um, I just now lent them to Lolita – and who knows – she hasn’t shown up – she hasn’t shown up and um who knows if she will, her friend was telling me that she probably isn’t going to come now, yeah, I lent them to her and I even ended up without any notes, but if she does show up, then I’ll give them to you’.)

(10) Gratitude (Farewell: Employee declines an invitation from his boss, +P, +D)

a. Well, sir, uh, I really appreciate the offer – I have prior engagements – I

b.

already know the date, uh, I already had scheduled plans, I mean I wish I could make it, it sounds really fun… (American #1) Lo que pasa es que ya tengo un compromiso y, pues, sí me gustaría ir al de Ud., pero creo que es más fuerte el compromiso que tengo y pues la verdad – le agradezco su invitación, pero no puedo asistir… (Mexican # 6) (‘the thing is that I already have a commitment and, well, I’d love to go to yours, but I think the other commitment I have is more important and well – I really appreciate your inviting me, but I wont’ be able to attend…’)

(11) Expression of empathy (Bookstore: Employee refuses boss’ request to stay late at work, +P, +D) a. I know you’re in a real pinch – but I just can’t stay late (American #14) b. Eh – es comprensible la situación en la que nos encontramos de verdad, yo quisiera quedarme, pero… (Mexican #9) (‘uh, the situation that we find ourselves in is really

understandable, I would like to stay, but …’)

In general, the numeric results provided in Table 2 suggest that in comparable situations Mexicans are more likely to negotiate a refusal employing more frequent attempts at indirectness in order to: 1) reduce the negative effects of a direct refusal (e.g., mitigated refusal); 2) delay a refusal response to soften an upcoming refusal (e.g., preparators); and, 3) promote interaction during the negotiation of a dispreferred response (e.g., indefinite replies, postponement). The Americans, however, showed a strong inclination towards alternatives by means of giving op-

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tions to the interlocutor in order to reach a compromise. Further, while the Americans displayed a stronger preference for positive supportive facework through partial agreements, the individuals in the Mexican group resorted to expressions of gratitude and respect when addressing a person of higher status. Overall, in both groups these strategies were employed to carry out relational work when negotiating a refusal in formal or informal situations. As will be shown in Section 4.3 below, the preference for these strategies varied for each situation and according to face system. The next section presents the preference for the pragmatic strategies employed across the six situations during the negotiation of a refusal for each participant by group.

4.3

Individual variability and speech act production

The analysis of the data shows that individual variability is the norm within each group. Figure 5 displays the preference for strategy use (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals) for each of the 20 American participants and Figure 6 displays the preference for these strategies for each of the 20 Mexican participants. (For the purpose of comparison and presentation, the category of indirect refusals in these figures combines the frequency of the 12 indirect refusal strategies outlined in Table 2, and the category of adjuncts to refusals includes the five strategies described in Table 2.)

Figure 5. Individual variation in the preference for pragmatic strategies during the negotiation of a refusal among the American participants


Although it was previously noted that indirect refusals were the preferred strategy for negotiating refusals of each participant and each group, Figures 5 and 6 reveal that the degree of indirectness varied. Similarly, individual variation in the preference for direct refusals and adjuncts to refusals can be seen in each group. For instance, among the Americans (Figure 5) (and in every situation) participant #10 produced the highest number of indirect refusals (n = 59), participant #14 the highest number of direct refusals (n = 20), and participant #12 the highest frequency of adjuncts to refusals (n = 29). Among the Mexicans (Figure 6), participant #15 producing the highest number of indirect refusals (n = 76), participant #7 the highest number of direct refusals (n = 20), and participant #9 the highest number of adjuncts to refusals (n = 23). Overall, these results illustrate that speech act production among native speakers is not uniform, but rather, their performance displays varying degrees of directness and indirectness which may be attributed to individual factors (e.g., degree of introversion or extroversion), the ability in the conversational skill of the speaker, social class, upbringing, familiarity with the situation, and the perception of social factors, such as social distance and social power, between the interlocutors. As observed by Eelen, variability is not “random, but rather, part of the system of politeness” (2001: 141). Since the focus of this investigation is to provide an analysis of the realization patterns of refusals among Mexicans and Americans in two different communities, statistical analyses were also carried out to address the issue of individual pragmatic variation among native speakers who belong to the same community of practice (Wenger 1998). In cross-linguistic research, statistical analyses are necessary to determine whether the data are indeed comparable. As can be seen

Figure 6. Individual variation in the preference for pragmatic strategies during the negotiation of a refusal among the Mexican participants

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graphically in Figures 5 and 6, the realization of relational work (the negotiation of face in formal and informal situations) is subject to individual variation. In the next section, the most frequent pragmatic strategies (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals) used to negotiate face when refusing invitations, requests, and suggestions will be analyzed according to three face systems (hierarchical, deference, and solidarity [Scollon & Scollon 2001]) and examined across the six situations. After an analysis of strategy use for each face system, the strategies utilized as head acts and supportive moves will be compared between the two groups, followed by a sequential analysis of the realization patterns of refusals.

4.4

Face systems and situational variation

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the face systems proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2001) describe three systems of interpersonal communication according to which interlocutors negotiate face based on shared (unmarked) assumptions and the work interlocutors invest to negotiate their pragmatic intent: hierarchical face (+P), deference face (+D), and solidarity face (–D). These systems are conditioned by the degree of social distance (+/– D) and social power (+/– P) between the interlocutors, and the six refusal situations were distributed across these systems. Table 4 shows the distribution of the pragmatic strategies employed to carry out relational work by both groups in refusing a suggestion, an invitation and a request from a person of equal or higher status across the six situations and in Table 4. Distribution of pragmatic strategies according to face system (Hierarchical [+P, +D], Deference [–P, +D], Solidarity [–P, –D]) and by situation among the Americans and the Mexicans (Total: 2,491 strategies) Americans

Mexicans

Situation Direct Indirect Type Refusals Refusals

Adjuncts Total Direct Indirect to Refusals Refusals Refusals

Adjuncts Total to Refusals

f (M) Hierarchical (+P, +D) Advisor 6 (.30) Farewell 25 (1.25) Bookstore 25 (1.25) Deference (–P, +D) Notes 12 ( .60) Solidarity (–P, –D) Birthday 30 (1.50) Bar 20 (1.0) Total 118

f (M)

f (M)

f (M)

f (M)

f (M)

129 (6.45) 51 (2.55) 96 (4.80) 67 (3.35) 109 (5.45) 39 (1.95)

186 188 173

6 (.30) 153 (7.65) 59 (2.95) 31 (1.55) 147 (7.35) 77 (3.85) 27 (1.35) 145 (7.25) 22 (1.10)

218 255 194

118 (5.90) 32 (1.60)

162

13 (.65) 140 (7.0)

167

147 (7.35) 61 (3.05) 155 (7.75) 59 (2.95) 754 309

238 27 (1.35) 180 (9.0) 32 (1.60) 234 45 (2.25) 151 (7.55) 41 (2.05) 1,181 149 916 245

14 (.70)

239 237 1,310


three face systems: Hierarchical (+P, +D, Advisor, Farewell, Bookstore), deference (+D, Notes), and solidarity (–D, Birthday, Bar). The table includes the frequency (f) and means (M) of direct and indirect refusals, and adjuncts to refusals. The percentages of strategy use in all of the situations are displayed graphically in Figure 7. For purposes of comparison, the 12 strategies that comprise the indirect refusal category were collapsed to provide one general frequency; similarly, the five strategies that include the adjuncts to refusals were combined into one frequency (see Table 2 for the strategies that comprise each category). As can be noted in Table 4 and Figure 7, the negotiation of face varied for each situation and for each face system. This information also reveals that native speaker performance is not uniform, but rather, situational variation is the norm during social interaction. In the next section, the situations that comprise each face system will be analyzed individually for each group and then compared. In addition, an analysis of the head acts (i.e., the strategy used to express the illocutionary force of a refusal) is provided for each situation, followed by a sequential analysis of the refusal interactions.

Figure 7. Situational variation according to face system (Hierarchical [+P, +D], Deference (–P, +D], Solidarity [–P, –D]). Percentage of pragmatic strategies (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals) used by the Americans and the Mexicans

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4.4.1 Hierarchical face system: Farewell, Bookstore, Advisor (+P, +D) As noted above, the asymmetric system included three situations that featured social power (+P) between the interlocutors. In these situations, a person in a position of lower status (a student) refuses an invitation (Farewell), a suggestion (Advisor), or a request (Bookstore) from a person of higher status such as a boss or a university professor. Because the Farewell and Bookstore situations involved a refusal to a boss’ request or invitation and as they displayed various similarities in the preference for strategy use, they will be examined together. Then, a sequential analysis of two comparable interactions of the Farewell and the Advisor situations will be presented for each group.

4.4.1.1 The negotiation of face in an employee-boss relationship: Farewell and Bookstore In these situations, a person of lower status refuses a boss’ invitation to attend his farewell party (Farewell) or boss’ request to stay late at work (Bookstore). The relationship between the interlocutors described in the situation prompt (see Appendix IA and IB), is that of an employee who has worked for his boss for a few years (Farewell) or a student who works part-time at the university bookstore (Bookstore). According to the descriptions of these situations, the employee and the boss do not socialize outside of the office, and their interaction is mostly confined to the workplace. As a result, in this asymmetric face system (+P), the social distance between the employee and the boss can be described as (semi-) distant. As shown in Table 4 and Figure 7, although both the Mexicans and the Americans chose a higher number of indirect strategies to negotiate a refusal in these two situations, the Mexicans employed a significantly higher level of indirectness than the Americans: Farewell [t(38) = 3.15, p < .05]; Bookstore [t(38) = 2.05, p < .05]. The respective means and standard deviations for Americans and Mexicans were: Farewell: M = 4.80/ S.D. = 2.04 [Americans]; M = 7.35/ S.D. = 2.996 [Mexicans]; Bookstore: M = 5.45/ S.D. = 2.01 [Americans]; M = 7.25/ S. D. = 3.37 [Mexicans]. Table 5 presents the most frequently employed strategies for both groups when declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell) (figures represent strategy use over 40% [or those that were used by at least 8 participants] in either group). This table includes the frequency of strategy use (f) and the number of informants (N) who used each strategy. As shown in Table 5, when declining an invitation from a boss, each group employed reasons or explanations as the default strategy (90% of Americans; 100% of Mexicans), followed by direct refusals, mitigated refusals, expressions of apology or regret, and expressions of positive opinion. The content of the strategy of


Table 5. Most frequently used strategies by Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when declining a boss’ invitation to attend a farewell party (Farewell)

Reason/Explanation Direct refusal Apology/Regret Mitigated refusal Alternative Positive opinion Gratitude Agreement Willingness Empathy

Americans f 30 25 15 11 11 32 3 12 12 8

No. of Informants 18 14 12 9 9 17 3 9 8 8

Mexicans f 40 31 27 26 2 34 29 6 8 0

No. of Informants 20 14 13 14 2 14 15 5 8 0

apology/regret (e.g., ‘I apologize/I’m sorry’), however, varied for each group: while the Americans almost consistently employed one form to express regret (i.e., ‘I’m sorry’), the Mexicans employed different forms such as regret (e.g., qué pena ‘it’s too bad’), apology (e.g., discúlpeme ‘I apologize’), apology by means of a hedged performative (le pido que me disculpe ‘I ask that you forgive me’; le pido mil disculpas ‘I ask you for a thousand pardons’), and requests for forgiveness (e.g., perdón ‘pardon me’). Further, mitigated refusals were more frequently used by the Mexicans; in these cases, the refusal was often internally modified by the conditional to express politeness in specific situations and a variety of mental state predicates (‘I think’, ‘I believe’) which conveyed tentativeness and/or a lack of commitment toward the truth of the proposition expressed. Also, while 45% (9 of 20 participants) of the Americans offered alternatives to give options to the boss to reach a compromise, in general, the Mexicans avoided this strategy (10% or 2 of 20 participants). Instead, the Mexicans expressed higher levels of deference and respect by expressing their gratitude at the beginning and at the end of the interaction (75% of Mexicans or 15 of 20 participants), conversely this strategy was almost absent in the English data (15% or 3 of 20 participants). Moreover, when declining a boss’ invitation the American data reflect higher indices of positive supportive facework which was used both to preface and to end a refusal response through expressions of agreement, empathy, and willingness. In general, these strategies were used less frequently and by fewer Mexican participants. With regard to the main refusal response, Figure 8 shows the preferred head acts used by each group in this situation. It includes the frequency of each head act (Y axis) and the number of participants (Part) that used each strategy.

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Figure 8. Distribution of refusal head acts when declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell)

As shown in Figure 8, when declining an invitation from a boss the head acts selected by the Americans included direct refusals (11 of 20 participants) and mitigated refusals (7 of 20 participants), in this order, and to a lesser extent reasons or explanations (6 of 20 participants), and one indefinite reply. In contrast, the individuals in the Mexican group selected either mitigated refusals (9 of 20 participants) or direct refusals (10 of 20 participants), less frequent reasons (5 of 20 participants), indefinite replies (4 of 20 participants), and one postponement. Thus, when refusing a person of higher status (e.g., a boss), it seems that the Americans in this study expressed their intentions clearly and directly, whereas the Mexicans tended to be more tentative and respectful. Moreover, instead of using direct refusals to open a refusal sequence, as did the Americans, most Mexicans utilized a series of indirect strategies followed by a direct refusal to close a refusal sequence. Example (12) shows an interaction between two Americans in which an employee declines an invitation from a boss (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (12) Farewell: Boss issues invitation Employee declines invitation (American #14) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1 → Boss: Um, I don’t know if you heard but I was just uh – promoted and 2 I’ll be moving to, uh Mexico City next month, um – and this weekend,

3 4 5 6 Employee: 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 → Boss: 14 15 Employee: 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Boss:


this Saturday, um – our sales group is gonna get together and we’re gonna have a little celebration at a restaurant, uh to celebrate my promotion and, uh I was hoping you could attend also. yeah, I heard about that, that’s really great ne:ws for you and everything – and I wish I could be there but I just can’t make it – [← HA] I already had plans and, I’m unable to attend – but wish I could be there, but – it’s kinda last minute, and I just can’t make it, I’m sorry. yeah, this is probably the last chance that uh we’d be able to have to uh – to celebrate this. yeah I know, and I’m really sorry, I wish I could attend but – there’s just no way I can make it, [← HA] I've got other things that I have to do that were already in the works, and if I could make it, I certainly would be there because you’ve been a great boss, and everything, but – I just can’t make it there. okay, we’ll do it another time.

The interaction in (12) is realized by means of an invitation-refusal sequence (lines 1–12) and an insistence-refusal sequence (lines 13–21), followed by the boss’ closing uptake (line 22). The first refusal response is prefaced by expressions of positive supportive facework (lines 6–7) and a wish to attend the party (line 8), followed by the head act in the form of a direct refusal modified by the upgrader ‘just’ (line 9). This head act is externally modified by two indirect strategies (reasons and a wish to attend the party) that mitigate the direct effects of the refusal (lines 10–11), followed by another direct refusal and an expression of regret to close the refusal sequence (line 12). After an indirect insistence on the part of the boss (lines 13–14), the employee’s second refusal response is polite but firm; once again, it begins by showing positive supportive facework and includes two indirect refusals (regret and wish) that function as pre-sequences (lines 15–16), followed by another direct refusal head act (line 17). The head act is mitigated by a justification (lines 18–19) and another expression of supportive facework complimenting the boss (line 20). Similar to the previous closing sequence (line 12), in this second response, the employee closes the sequence with a second direct refusal, expressing his clear intention not to attend the party (line 21). In order to compare the realization patterns of Mexicans and Americans in refusal interactions, a Mexican interaction is provided in example (13). This in-

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teraction, an employee refusing a boss’ invitation, takes place between two Mexicans. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves.) ( 13) Farewell: Boss issues invitation Employee declines invitation (Mexican #18) (Mexico) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1 → Boss: Javier – buenos días, ‘Javier – good morning’ 2 Employee: buenos días. ‘good morning.’ 3 → Boss: este – Javier, mira, quería comentarte algo – afortunadamente, 4 para mí la compañía me ha ascendido – hoy me tengo que – trasladar ((seven lines [5–11] of transcript omitted)) ‘um – Javier, listen, I wanted to mention something to you- fortunately for me the company has promoted me today – I have to move 12 …entonces yo quisiera hacerte una invitación – mañana sábado 13 a las 7 de la noche, que me pudieras acompañar 14 en el restaurán La Avenida aquí en el centro de la Ciudad ((five lines [15–19] of transcript omitted)) ‘…so I would like to extend you an invitation – tomorrow Saturday at 7 in the evening, to join me at the restaurant La Avenida right downtown’ 20 Employee: este, bueno, de antemano felicidades, creo que usted ya se merecía 21 este ascenso – por el trabajo que ha tenido usted siempre, 22 pero bueno, lo que pasa es que mire, como yo siempre tengo 23 los sábados y domingos libres, bueno yo siempre me gusta pasarlo 24 con mi familia ¿no?, siempre ¿no? – este 25 y lo que pasa es que el día de mañana teníamos planeado de ir al cine, 26 y, bueno – no sé hasta qué pu:nto se pudiera que, 27 bueno – tal vez no asistiría, ¿no? [← HA] 28 pero bueno, como le digo – yo siempre he estado, este, 29 a sus órdenes a su servicio y todo, 30 bueno – creo que usted es una gran persona 31 en cuanto al trabajo que usted desempeña 32 y, bueno -tal vez que me disculpara usted ¿no? el no poder ir a la fiesta 33 porque, bueno -tendría yo que atender algunos asuntos familiares ¿no? ‘um, well, first of all congratulations, I think that you deserved this promotion for a while because of the job that you have always done, but anyway, the thing is that listen, since I always have Saturdays and Sundays off, well I always like to spend them

34 → Boss: 35 36 Employee: 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Boss: 45 46 47→Employee:

Chapter 4. Results: Relational work and linguistic politeness 101

with my family, right?, always, right?, um and the thing is that tomorrow we had planned to go to the movies and, well – I don’t know up to what point one could well – maybe I wouldn’t be there, okay? [← HA] but anyway, like I said, I have always been, um at your disposal at your service and all well, I think you’re a great person with regard to the work that you do and well maybe you can forgive me, right?, my not being able to go to the party because, well, I would have to tend to some family matters, right?’ este, no sé si – si en este caso después de que salgas del cine, pudieras – aunque sea pasar un momento convivir un ratito. ‘um, I don’t know if – if in this case after you get out of the movies, maybe you could even if it’s just to spend a little bit of time to get together with us for a little while.’ lo que pasa es que bueno, a veces mi – lo que es a mi familia no le gusta entrar en ciertas cosas que son así como discutir sobre el trabajo ¿no?- entonces creo que para mí sería un poco pues, molesto y que les tuviera yo que decir que me acompañaran o que me esperaran algo así – ¿no?, porque imagínese, salir – entrar a las 7 y salir a las 10 de la noche, y como que regresar, como que no sería algo válido ¿no?, [← HA] entonces pues – creo que me gustaría que me disculpara ¿no? ‘the thing is that well, sometimes my – my family doesn’t like certain things that are things like discussing work, you see?, so I think that for me it would be a little well, bothersome if I had to tell them to go with me or to wait for me or something like that, you see? because think about it, going out, going in at around 7 and getting out at 10 at night, and it’s sort of like coming back, it’s like it wouldn’t really be right, you see? [← HA] so I’d like you to forgive me, is that ok?’ bueno, pues te agradezco t:u – sinceridad y sobre todo el apoyo que nos diste en este tiempo que estuve con ustedes, y en otra ocasión será – la invitación ‘well, then I appreciate your sincerity and most of all the support that you gave us in the time that I have been here with you all, so we’ll do it some other time’ sí, gracias. ‘yes, thanks.’


The interaction in (13) consists of an opening greeting sequence that expresses appropriate social behavior (lines 1–2), an invitation-refusal sequence (3–33), an insistence-refusal sequence (34–43), and a terminal exchange (line 44–47). Unlike the direct refusal response by the American participant in (12), the refusal sequence by the Mexican in example (13) consists of various indirect refusals and expressions of positive supportive facework: after the boss’ long invitation (lines 3–19), the refusal sequence opens with positive remarks (lines 20–21) and a detailed justification (lines 22–25), followed by the refusal head act (lines 26–27). The head act is prefaced by two discourse markers (y, bueno ‘and, well’) followed by an indirect refusal that contains various forms of internal modification such as the subjunctive to express doubt (se pudiera ‘one might be able to’) (line 26), a discourse marker to further delay the refusal (bueno ‘well’), a modal adverb to express probability (tal vez ‘maybe’), the conditional form to express politeness (asistiría ‘would attend’), and a tag question that asks for the interlocutor’s confirmation (¿no? ‘okay’) (line 27). Moreover, the strategies following the head act include additional positive supportive facework expressed by means of positive remarks and compliments to the boss (lines 28–31), followed by a modal adverb and an apology to emphasize the refusal, the deferential address-form usted (youFORMAL) (y, bueno-tal vez que me disculpara usted, ¿no? el no poder ir a la fiesta ‘and well – maybe you can forgive me, right? my not being able to go to the party’) (line 32), and a final justification related to his family obligations to close the refusal sequence (line 33). In reaction to the boss’ indirect insistence (lines 34–35), the second refusal response is realized by means of a detailed explanation. This reason functions as the head act and may be interpreted as a polite refusal on the part of the boss (lines 36–42) followed by a second request for forgiveness (entonces pues – creo que me gustaría que me disculpara, ¿no? ‘so I’d like you to forgive me, is that okay?’) (line 43). The terminal exchange ends with a mutual agreement between the interlocutors (lines 44–47). Overall, the tone in this Mexican refusal interaction is more formal, respectful, and tentative than the American refusal in (12) that is expressed by means of a straightforward (and direct) response.

4.4.1.2 Refusing a professor’s suggestion: Advisor (+P, +D) In this situation, a student meets with his advisor to go over his class schedule for next semester, and during the course of the conversation the professor suggests that the student take an additional class. In this asymmetric system, the relationship between the student and the professor is mostly academic and may be described as distant (+D). According to the means in Table 4, although no significant differences were found between the groups in the use of direct or indirect refusals in the Advisor situation, the Mexicans employed a slightly higher number of indirect strategies (n = 153; M = 7.65) than the Americans (n = 129;


Table 6. Most frequently used strategies among Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a professor’s advice to take an extra class (Advisor)

Reason/Explanation Mitigated refusal Postponement Request for information Indefinite reply Agreement

Americans f No. Informants 36 18 16 14 15 12 34 13 18 10 44 17

Mexicans f No. Informants 64 20 18 11 21 12 16 8 15 6 46 17

M = 6.45); the preference for direct refusals and adjuncts to refusals was similar in both groups. Table 6 displays the most frequently used strategies by the Mexicans and the Americans when refusing a professor’s advice to take an extra class. It includes the frequency of strategy use and the number of informants who used each strategy. As Table 6 shows, when refusing a professor’s advice both groups displayed a preference for indirect refusals across the interaction; in particular, participants tended to use reasons (90% [18 of 20 participants] of Americans; 100% of Mexicans), mitigated refusals (70% of Americans [14 of 20 participants]; 55% of Mexicans [11 of 20 participants]), and postponements (60% of Americans and Mexicans [12 of 20 participants]). Of these strategies, a reason or explanation was the indirect strategy preferred by the Mexicans (n = 64), but these were less frequently employed by the Americans (n = 36). Also, both groups tended to preface a refusal with partial agreements to express positive facework. With respect to crosslinguistic differences, the Americans tended to use a higher number of requests for information (65% or 13 of 20 participants) and indefinite replies (50% or 10 of 20 participants) than the Mexicans who used these strategies less often (request for information [40% or 8 of 20 participants]; indefinite reply [30% or 6 of 20 participants]). A request for information was often employed by the individuals in the American group as a discourse strategy to delay a refusal across multiple turns. Indefinite replies were utilized to express uncertainty on the part of the speaker and to avoid a direct refusal. With respect to the preference for strategies used as head acts, Figure 9 shows the distribution of refusal head acts in both groups. This figure includes the frequency of each head act (Y axis) and the number of participants (Part) that used each head act. Unlike the Farewell situation in which a direct refusal was frequently chosen as the main head act to decline the boss’ invitation (mainly among the Americans), when refusing a professor’s advice both groups showed a similar preference


Figure 9. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a professor’s advice (Advisor)

for three indirect refusals as head acts: mitigated refusals (Americans: 65% or 13 of 20 participants; Mexicans: 55% or 11 of 20 participants), reasons or explanations (Americans: 55% or 11 of 20 participants; Mexicans: 40% or 8 of 20 participants), and postponements (Americans: 50% or 10 of 20 participants; Mexicans: 45% or 9 of 20 participants), and to a lesser extent, direct refusals (mostly Americans), indefinite replies, and alternatives (only Americans) (Figure 9). To illustrate the negotiation of face when refusing a professor’s advice to take a class (+P), the next section analyzes the sequential organization of a refusal in the Advisor situation. The example in (14) shows an interaction between two Americans, in which a student refuses a professor’s advice to take an extra class (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves).

(14) Advisor: Professor gives advice Student: refuses the advice (Participant # 6) (United States) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1→Advisor: I’ve been looking over your transcript, and – it seems to me that, uh 2 while you’ve taken a lot of – Spanish literature classes, you haven’t 3 taken any Spanish linguistics classes, and there’s a class that’s, 4 uh offered next semester that I think would be very beneficial 5 Spanish linguistics class. 6 Student: okay, could you – just tell me a little bit abou:t it? 7 Advisor: um, yeah, it just kinda goes over the basics of, uh, linguistics 8 and how it applies, how that applies to the Spanish language.


9 Student: mmhm, um, well, am I all set to – graduate here? = 10 Advisor: = ah well this class isn’t a requirement, but I just think it would be 11 really beneficial for you to take it since you’ve taken so many literature 12 classes to be able to – say that you’ve taken a linguistics class also. 13 Student: mmhm, I I – I guess I just – I wasn’t really looking at taking a 14 linguistics, cla:ss ah next term [← HA] 15 and um, (0.2) if you can just explain, a little bit more about – why? 16→Advisor: well, I just think it would be more of a well-rounded, uh major for you 17 if you took – not just all literature classes but linguistics classes also. 18 Student: okay, well, I I, I’m actually looking at doing some grad school, 19 in – the literature field, um, 20 so: I think probably I’m not gonna take the class. [← HA] 21→Advisor: okay, it’s your decision. 22 Student: mmhm.

The interaction in (14) consists of three sequences: a suggestion-refusal sequence (lines 1–15), an insistence-refusal response (lines 16–20), and a terminal exchange (lines 21–22). After the advisor’s suggestion that the student take a class (lines 1– 5), the initial refusal sequence is comprised of three requests for additional information in different turns. Each request for additional information is prefaced by means of partial agreements (‘okay’) (line 6), non-verbal vocalizations (‘mmhm’) and the discourse marker ‘well’ (line 9), and the discourse marker ‘and’ and nonverbal vocalizations (‘um’) (line 15). The first refusal head act is delayed and realized by means of a mitigated refusal which expresses the student’s unwillingness to take the class (lines 13–14). The head act is prefaced by another non-verbal vocalization and a mental state predicate to soften the refusal response (‘mmhm, I guess I wasn’t really looking at taking a linguistics class next term’), followed by a request for additional information (line 15) to further delay the refusal. Upon the advisor’s indirect insistence that the student consider taking the class (lines 16–17), the student closes the interaction with a firm, but mitigated refusal. The refusal is prefaced by a partial agreement (‘ok’) and the discourse marker ‘well’, followed by a justification of the refusal (lines 18–19). The final refusal head act is tentatively presented in the form of an expression that postpones the refusal and ends the interaction politely (‘so: I think probably I’m not gonna take the class) (line 20), followed by the closing sequence (lines 21–22). Example (15) shows a comparable interaction between two Mexicans at a Mexican university, with a student refusing a professor’s advice to take an extra class. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves).


(15) Advisor: Professor gives advice Student: refuses the advice (Participant # 6) (Mexico) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1→Advisor: Buenas tardes, Omar ‘Good afternoon, Omar’ 2 Student: buenas tardes, Profesor ‘Good afternoon, Professor’ 3→Advisor: ¿ya estás preparado para analizar las – las materias 4 que vas a cursar este semestre? ‘are you getting ready to go over the – the courses that you’re going to take this semester?’ 5 Student: sí, de hecho, ya tengo un plan – en el cual- este – tengo escritas, 6 registradas las materias que pienso tomar este semestre (…) ((three lines [7–9] of transcript omitted)) ‘yes, in fact, I already have a sheet on which – um – I have written, recorded the courses that I plan to take this semester (…)’ 10–11 Advisor: ((Two lines of transcript omitted)) 12 …yo te invitaría a que antes de que – tomaras algunas de estas materias 13 que tú ya has mencionado, selecciones bien y hagas un cambio 14 por esto que te estoy mencionando, porque te ayudaría bastante 15 en tu formación – y sobre todo en el contexto en el que vas a entrar 16 en este momento, relacionado con el conocimiento de la literatura. ‘…I would encourage you to – before taking some of the courses that you have already mentioned, to choose well and make a change for the one that I am mentioning, because it would help you quite a bit in your preparation – and above all in the context that you are in which you are going to be entering at this time, related to the knowledge of literature.’ 17 Student: mmm bueno, pero, no – no tendría que ser necesariamente – 18 o forzoso y ahorita – en este semestre, ¿o si? [← HA] ‘mmm well, but, it wouldn’t – wouldn’t have to be necessarily obligatory and right now this semester, or would it? 19→Advisor: de alguna manera sería, no tanto forzoso, pero sí necesario 20 en cuanto a tu propia formación, eso te ayudaría mucho – 21 a tener claridad en el trabajo que vas a realizar = ‘in some way it would be, not exactly obligatory, but yes necessary with respect to your own preparation, that would help you a lot – to have clarity in the project that you are going to do =’ 22 Student: = y ¿qué posibilidades hay de que la pueda yo posponer 23 digamos – para el semestre entrante? [← HA] 24 porque ahorita de hecho el tiempo que tengo está saturado (0.1) 25 y:: se me haría un poco, se me complicaría – tomar otra materia más.


‘=and what possibilities would there be that I would be able to put if off let’s say – until the coming semester? [← HA] because right now in fact the time that I have is really full (0.1) and it would make me a little, it would complicate things – for me to take another course.’ 26→Advisor: ¿te parece que lo analicemos con calma y lo platicamos en otra ocasión? ‘what if we think about it a little more and talk about it at another time?’ 27 Student: me parece bien. ‘that sounds good.’

The interaction in (15) is realized in four sequences: an opening greeting sequence (lines 1–2), the suggestion-refusal response (lines 3–18), an insistence-refusal sequence (lines 19–25), and a terminal exchange (lines 26–27). The opening sequence signals the asymmetric relationship between the participants: the professor addressing the student by his first name to show involvement (Omar) and the student addressing the professor with the deferential address form ‘profesor’ to show independence (lines 1–2); the greeting sequence is seen as an instance of socially appropriate behavior in this Mexican community. After an assessment of the student’s schedule (lines 5–9), the professor offers a detailed suggestion that the student take a class (lines 10–16). The refusal response is realized in one turn (lines 17–18); the head act is prefaced by the discourse marker bueno (‘well’) and a mitigated response using the conditional to express politeness (no tendría que ser…’it wouldn’t have to be..’), followed by a tag question (¿o sí? ‘or would it?’) which asks for the professor’s confirmation (line 18). After the professor’s assessment indirectly insisting that the student make an effort to take the class (lines 19–21), the student refuses by means of two indirect strategies: a postponement (head act) (lines 22–23) and a detailed justification (lines 24–25). Due to the frequent presence of mitigation, tentativeness, and indirect strategies in this final refusal response (i.e., social behavior in excess), this refusal sequence is open to a polite interpretation in this sociocultural setting. The terminal exchange leaves the channel of communication open for future negotiation and both interlocutors arrive at a mutual agreement (lines 26–27). Unlike the Americans who infrequently employed formal forms of address (e.g., ‘sir,’ ‘boss’), the individuals in the Mexican group employed various kinds of formulaic, ritualized, and formal expressions when addressing a status-unequal interlocutor. For example, the deferential address form usted [‘you’-FORMAL] accompanied by its respective verbal morphology, was consistently used when addressing a boss (Farewell, Bookstore) or a professor (Advisor). Also, among the Mexicans in this Mexican community the person in the subordinate position employed independence strategies in the form of titles to show respect and po-


liteness in these situations, such as profesor ([‘professor’], Advisor), jefe ([‘boss’], Farewell), and señor ([‘sir’], Farewell). Overall, the selection of these forms of address in the Mexican community under study reflects an important aspect of relational work when negotiating a refusal in asymmetric relationships. Specifically, they represent socially appropriate behavior for expressing respect and deference with a person of higher status.

4.4.2 Deference face system – Notes (–P, +D) According to Scollon and Scollon (2001), in a deference face system, the interlocutors see themselves as equals or at the same social level (–P), but the relationship between them is perceived as distant (+D). In the Notes situation a student who often misses class asks a classmate with whom he rarely interacts if he can borrow his notes. According to the role play description (see Appendix IA-IB), the occasional interaction between the classmates is restricted to the classroom and, as such, the relationship is considered distant. As a result, the weight of imposition in asking for the notes is relatively high. Based on a comparison of the means of strategy use for the Notes situation shown in Table 4, a significant difference was found in the preference for expressions used as adjuncts to refusals [t(38) = –2.46, p < .05]. The American participants used a significantly higher number of strategies to express positive supportive facework (positive opinion, agreement, empathy, willingness) than the individuals in the Mexican group, who rarely used these strategies to preface a refusal response. Regarding the preference for indirectness (Figure 7, Table 4), although no significant differences obtained, the Mexican participants employed a slightly higher number of indirect strategies (83.8%; n = 140) than the Americans (72.8%; n = 118).

Table 7. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a classmate’s request to borrow class notes (Notes)

Reason/Explanation Indefinite reply Alternative Direct Preparator Agreement

Americans f No. Informants 57 19 17 10 24 15 12 6 4 4 20 12

Mexicans f No. Informants 54 19 23 10 8 5 13 8 15 11 12 10


Table 7 shows the most frequently used strategies by both groups when refusing to lend notes to a classmate. As seen in Table 7, both groups utilized reasons or justifications for the refusal (95% or 19 of 20 participants in each group) and, to a lesser extent, indefinite replies (50% or 10 of 20 participants in each group) when refusing the classmate’s request for notes. The refusal response in both groups was often prefaced by partial agreements to express positive facework (Americans [60% or 12 of 20 participants]; Mexicans [50% or 10 of 20 participants]). Once again, the use of partial agreements was more pronounced among the Americans (n = 20) and less frequent among the Mexicans (n = 12). In addition, 40% (or less) of the participants chose a direct refusal (Americans [6 of 20 participants]; Mexicans [8 of 20 participants]) in this situation. With regard to cross-linguistic differences, again, the Americans showed a greater preference for alternatives (75% or 15 of 20 participants; n = 24) than the Mexicans, who rarely used this strategy (25% or 5 of 20 participants; n = 8). In contrast, in this situation the Mexicans often prefaced their refusal response by means of preparators that delayed the refusal (55% or 11 of 20 participants; n = 15) (e.g., ¿sabes qué? ‘you know what?’; el problema es que …. ‘the problem is that…’ lo que pasa es que… ‘the thing is that…’), while this strategy was almost absent among the Americans (20% or 4 of 20 participants; n = 4). Cross-linguistic differences were also noted with respect to the preference for head acts by both groups. Figure 10 shows the distribution of refusal head acts in

Figure 10. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a classmate’s request (Notes)


the Notes situation for both groups. It includes the frequency of each head act (Y axis) and the number of participants (Part) that used each head act. As illustrated in Figure 10, six different strategies (one direct and five indirect refusals) were employed to express a refusal response in the Notes situation, and the selection of these strategies varied between the groups. Both groups employed reasons or explanations as the main refusal response (70% or 14 of 20 of participants in each group), but the content of this strategy differed between the groups. Among the Mexicans, specific reasons referring to a third party who was not present during the interaction were frequent and were employed to protect the interlocutor’s face. Among the Americans, however, reasons for refusing often included ethical and honest justifications and were oriented towards the speaker’s benefit. In addition to reasons mainly used as head acts, other strategies were utilized less frequently. For example, among the Americans, direct (30% or 6 of 20 participants) and mitigated refusals (20% or 4 of 20 participants) were utilized to convey a straightforward and unambiguous refusal, whereas some Mexicans preferred indefinite replies (40% or 8 of 20 participants) and postponements (15% or 3 of 20 participants) to delay or to end the refusal vaguely and across various turns. To illustrate how the negotiation of face differs between the American and Mexican cultures when refusing a person of equal status in a relationship that is characterized as distant (+D), an example from each of these groups is presented below. The sequential organization of the refusal in the Notes situation is also analyzed for each group. Example (16) shows an interaction between two American students in which Ben asks his classmate, Joel, to lend him the class notes and Joel refuses. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (16) Notes: Ben: asks for notes Joel: refuses to lend notes to a classmate (American # 14) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1 → Ben: Hey, Joel, man, I know we got that, uh we got that exam 2 comin’ up n’ everything and uh, I’m just wonderin’ if I could maybe 3 borrow your notes to study cuz I, really need to do good on this exam= 4 Joel: = yeah::, I – I hear ya, I know you need to do good, 5 but – ya know, I just don’t feel comfortable giving you my notes 6 cuz I’ve worked so ha:rd, 7 and it doesn’t seem like you’ve done that much [← HA] 8 → Ben: yeah, well I I mean – I’m turnin’ over a new leaf man, I really wanna, 9 ya know – study hard for this exam and do, so I can do well in the class. 10 Joel: yeah, that’s great, but that’s 11 kind of somethin’ you’ve got to take into consideration ahead of time, 12 I know you’re tryin’ to turn a new leaf, but maybe that’s somethin’

13 14 Ben: 15 Joel: 16 17 18 19 20 Ben:


you gotta do next semester, ya know ((laughter)) = [← HA] =oh man, it’s not too late now, ya know, I still gotta study for the exam, yeah, I hear that, but ya know – I just don’t feel comfortable giving you my notes, if you got some specific questions maybe I can meet with you, maybe give ya a little bit of help, but I just can’t just all out give you my notes. [← HA] okay.

The interaction in (16) is realized by means of three refusal sequences: a requestrefusal sequence (lines 1–7) and two insistence-refusal sequences (lines 8–13, 14–19), followed by the closing uptake (line 20). Each refusal response is prefaced by positive remarks (‘yeah, that’s great,’ line 10) or expressions that indicate that the interlocutor is acknowledging (although not acceding to) the interlocutor’s request (‘I hear ya’ [line 4], ‘yeah, I hear that’ [line 15]). The refusal response (head act) is accomplished by means of reasons that express the speaker’s true feelings towards the situation, namely, ‘I just don’t feel comfortable giving you my notes’. This response occurred at the beginning (line 5) and is reiterated at the end of the interaction (line 16). In addition, the first two refusal head acts are realized indirectly by means of two reasons (lines 5–7, 11–13). Unlike the first two refusal responses (lines 4–7, 10–13), the final refusal sequence, prefaced by signals of partial agreement and solidarity ‘yeah, I hear that’ (line 15), features two indirect strategies: an explanation of the speaker’s true feelings (line 16) and an alternative (line 17–18). The final refusal response ends with a direct refusal that emphasizes the speaker’s clear intention of not lending the notes (line 19). Example (17) shows an interaction between two Mexican students: Jorge asks a classmate, Manuel, to lend him the class notes and Manuel refuses. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (17) Notes: Jorge: asks for notes Javier: refuses to lend his notes (Participant # 18) (Mexico) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1 → Jorge: ¿Qué tal?, ¿cómo estás? ‘Hey, how’re you doing?’ 2 Javier: bien bien. ‘fine fine.’ 3 → Jorge: oye, fíjate que est::e quería un favor = ‘hey, listen I um (wanted) need a favor’ 4 Javier: = uhu = ‘mhmm’ 5 Jorge: = a ver si me puedes prestar tus apuntes – lo que pasa es que ves

111


6 7 8 9 Javier: 10 11 12 13 14 Jorge: 15 Javier: 16 17→Jorge: 18 19 Javier: 20 Jorge: 21 Javier: 22 23 Jorge:

que no he entrado a clases y todo esto y no los tengo completos, y ya la próxima semana es – es el examen, quiero ver si me los puedes prestar ‘(I wanted) to see if you can lend me your notes – the thing is that you know I haven’t been to classes and all of that and mine aren’t complete, and next week is – is the exam already, I want to see if you can lend them to me’ este – hí::jole, pero es que – te tardaste en pedírmelos, lo que pasa es que vino Adriana – y ya me los pidió y ya se los di a ella, y realmente pues en este momento no ((laughter)) los tengo – o sea no te los podría prestar [← HA] entonces Adriana me los regresaría el lunes ‘um – darn, but the thing is you waited too long to ask me for them, the thing is that Adriana came and she already asked me for them and I gave them to her, and honestly right now I don’t ((laughter)) have them, so I wouldn’t be able to lend them to you [← HA] because Adriana would be giving them back to me on Monday’ ¿hasta el lunes?= ‘not until Monday?’ = sí, por eso ya se los presté a ella y ella, y ella como ahorita ya no viene, pues imagínate, peor, o sea… ‘yeah, that’s what I mean I already lent them to her and since she’s not around right now, well think about it, worse, so….’ y ¿no los puedes conseguir para mañana?, o sea, es que si le hablas por teléfono o algo = ‘and you can’t get them back by tomorrow? I mean, if you call her, or something…’ = no me sé su teléfono. (← HA) ‘I don’t know her number.’ ¿no lo tienes?= ‘you don’t have it?’ = no, o sea imagínate – o sea, por eso me los pidió hoy para dá:rselos ‘no, I mean think about it – that’s why she asked me for them so that I would give them to her bueno, pues sale, ni hablar, gracias. ‘well, that’s okay, don’t worry about it, thanks.’

The interaction in (17) is comprised of three sequences: an opening sequence (lines 1–2), a request-refusal sequence (3–16), an insistence-refusal sequence (lines 17– 22), and a closing turn (line 23). Each of the refusal responses (lines 9–13, 19)


is followed by a confirmation request and a refusal response, respectively (lines 14–16, 20–22). In response to the two turn-unit request (lines 3, 5–8), the refusal response, prefaced by the discourse marker hí::jole (‘darn’) (line 9), is achieved by means of two indirect strategies, a reason referring to a third party (lines 9–11, 13) and a mitigated refusal as a head act (no te los podría prestar ‘I wouldn’t be able to lend them to you’) using the conditional to express relational work and politeness in this situation (line 12). Note that the first negative reply is realized by means of a direct refusal in a soft voice accompanied by a laughter particle which further mitigates the directness of the refusal (line 11) (y realmente pues en este momento no ((laughter)) los tengo ‘and honestly right now I don’t ((laughter)) have them’). The additional refusal responses across the interaction are realized indirectly by means of reasons relating to a third party who has already borrowed the notes and currently has them in her possession (lines 15–16, 19, 21–22). In general, when refusing to lend notes to a classmate in a deference face system (+D), providing a specific (often fictitious) reason that refers to a third party (one who is not present during the interaction) and the frequent use of indefinite replies over various turns are the preferred strategies of the individuals in the Mexican group so as to express involvement with the interlocutor. These are strategies that reflect a sociocultural expectation of this Mexican community, namely, the use of ‘white lies’ to express cooperation so as to reinforce the links of affiliation and camaraderie between the interlocutors. In contrast, among the Americans, straightforward and honest reasons involving the speaker (often related to ethical concerns and fairness) and the frequent realiance on alternatives are two strategies that are employed to emphasize the speaker’s independence face. Thus, as the interactions in (16) and (17) illustrate, in each community the negotiation of face is manifested with different orientations: involvement among the Mexicans with face considerations toward the interlocutor (i.e., affiliation), and independence among the Americans with face considerations towards the speaker’s face (i.e., autonomy).

4.4.3 Solidarity face system – Birthday and Bar (–P, –D) According to Scollon and Scollon (2001), in a solidarity face system both interlocutors see themselves in an equal social position (–P) and share a close relationship. In this study, two situations represent situations of solidarity face: Birthday and Bar. In both situations, the interlocutors are college students and friends and the relationship between them is viewed as close (–D). In the Birthday situation a person declines an invitation from a friend, and in the Bar situation a student refuses a classmate’s/friend’s suggestion to skip class and go to a bar. In these situ-


ations, the interactions between participants in both groups reflect informality as demonstrated by the use of the second person singular form of address tú [“youINFORMAL”] and various formulaic linguistic expressions (e.g., in-group identity markers, given names, nick names) frequently utilized in colloquial speech among male university students in both communities. As will be shown in the next section, the preference for strategy selection and the degree of directness in a solidarity face system (–D) was conditioned by the situation and the eliciting act, namely, refusing a friend’s invitation to a birthday party or refusing a friend’s suggestion to skip class and go to a bar.

4.4.3.1 Declining an invitation from a friend – Birthday (–D) Differences and similarities were found between the groups when declining an invitation from a friend. Based on the data presented in Table 4, when means comparisons were conducted between the groups (for the Birthday situation), significant differences were noted in the preference for adjuncts to refusals to express positive facework, [t(38) = –2.95, p < .05]. The Americans employed a significantly higher number of adjuncts to refusals (positive opinion, agreement, empathy, willingness) than the individuals in the Mexican group, who employed these expressions infrequently to preface a refusal response. Although no significant differences obtained in the preference for indirect strategies, the Mexicans utilized a higher number of indirect refusals (75.3%; n = 180) than the Americans (61.8%; n = 147). Table 8 shows the most frequently used strategies when declining an invitation from a friend for both groups. Table 8. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when declining a friend’s invitation to attend a birthday party (Birthday) Americans f No. Informants Reason/Explanation 56 20 30 14 Direct refusal 14 9 Indefinite reply 9 Repetition of a portion of previous utterance 11 12 8 Request for information Apology/Regret 16 10 6 6 Mitigated refusal Alternative 16 11 Agreement 25 15 14 10 Positive opinion Empathy 13 10 Willingness 9 8

Mexicans f No. Informants 61 20 27 12 23 12 14 10 13 9 12 7 20 11 2 1 17 12 6 5 0 0 5 4


As seen in Table 8, every participant in each group employed at least one reason to decline an invitation. This strategy was followed by direct refusals (Americans [70% or 14 of 20 participants]; Mexicans [60% or 12 of 20 participants]), and indefinite replies (Americans [45% or 9 of 20 participants]; Mexicans [60% or 12 of 20 participants]). Other strategies that were employed less frequently to decline an invitation (by 50% of the participants or less) included: a repetition of a portion of the previous utterance, requests for additional information, and expressions of apology or regret. With respect to the content of expressions of apology or regret, a wider array of forms was utilized by the Mexicans (e.g., lástima ‘too bad’, discúlpame ‘forgive me’, me disculpas ‘will you forgive me’, te pido una disculpa ‘I ask that you forgive me’). Similar to their behavior in the Farewell situation, the Americans almost consistently employed the unmarked form ‘sorry’ with various elements of intensification (e.g., ‘sorry,’ ‘so sorry,’ ‘really sorry’). Further, while 55% (or 11 of 20 participants) of the Americans employed alternatives in order to reach a compromise with the interlocutor (i.e., setting up alternative arrangements in order to avoid a complete refusal), this strategy was avoided almost totally by the Mexicans, with the exception of one participant. Further, the individuals in the Mexican group preferred mitigated refusals to attenuate the negative effects of a direct response (55% or 11 of 20 participants), whereas this strategy was less frequently used by the Americans (30% or 6 of 20 participants). Finally, once again, most of the Americans showed an inclination to use positive supportive facework (positive opinion, empathy, willingness) to preface and to end a refusal sequence, whereas these strategies were infrequently employed by the Mexicans. With regard to the main refusal response, Figure 11 displays the distribution of the five strategies used as head acts by both groups. It includes the frequency of each head act (Y axis) and the number of participants (Part) that used each head act. As shown in Figure 11, in both groups a refusal to a friend was often expressed through a combination of reasons or explanations (Americans: 80% or 16 of 20 participants; Mexicans: 65% or 13 of 20 participants) and direct refusals (Americans: 70% or 14 of 20 participants; Mexicans: 50% or 10 of 20 participants). These were followed by other indirect refusals employed by fewer participants and less frequently: indefinite replies, mitigated refusals, and postponements (Americans only). With respect to the realization of direct refusals, both groups often employed various in-group solidarity markers (Brown & Levinson 1987) to express camaraderie such as ‘dude’ ‘man’ (e.g., I can’t, man) or güey (‘dude’), hermano (‘brother’), or ‘carnal (‘bro’) (e.g., no puedo güey ‘I can’t, dude’). While direct refusals were more common among the individuals in the American group, the Mexicans resorted to mitigated expressions (e.g., no creo que pueda ‘I don’t think


Figure 11. Distribution of refusal head acts when declining a friend’s invitation to a birthday party (Birthday)

I’ll be able to’) to convey a refusal more tentatively. To illustrate the negotiation of face when refusing an invitation from a friend (–D), two examples in the Birthday situation (one per group) will be presented along with an analysis of the sequential organization of each interaction. Example (18) shows an interaction between two American students (friends), Tyler and Ben.11 In this situation Tyler refuses Ben’s invitation to attend a party celebrating his 21st birthday. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (18) Birthday: Ben issues invitation Tyler refuses invitation (Participant # 2) (United States) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1 → Ben: He::y Tyler, how´s it goin´?= 2 Tyler: =du:de, what´s happening, it´s [been forever] 3 Ben: [oh ma:n ], no kiddin´, no kiddin´, 4 → I´m so glad I saw you, man [because] 5 Tyler: [yeah] 6 Ben: check this out, next weekend, on Friday night, 7 8 o’clock, my 21st birthday party at my house man

11. This example was previously analyzed in Félix-Brasdefer (2006b) for pedagogical purposes.


8 9

Tyler: oh::, [no: way dude] Ben: [all the old crew´s] gonna be there, 10 Tyler: [oh that´s gonna be awesome] 11 Ben: [it’s gonna be the bomb man,] [it’s gonna be] 12 Tyler: [oh, that´s gonna be so: cool] 13 Ben: [so: cool], you gotta show up,= 14 Tyler: =oh, what day is it again? 15 Ben: Friday at 8= 16 Tyler: =Friday? 17 Ben: my: house= 18 Tyler: =aw, dude, I´m goin´ outta town this weekend= [← HA] 19 Ben: =ah, [ma::n,] 20 Tyler: [yeah] 21→ Ben: ya gotta stick around, it´s my 21st= 22 Tyler: =I know= 23 Ben: = the big day= 24 Tyler: =I know [oh: ] 25 Ben: [it´s gonna] be the best 26 Tyler: man, okay, I just, ya know, I got this great deal on like, 27 a flight and I´m goin´ outta town and seein’ my, you know, 28 my fa:mily= [← HA] 29 Ben: = ((sigh)) oh:, man, I understa:nd = 30 Tyler: = yeah 31 Ben: I understand = 32→ Tyler: = yeah, but, ya know, maybe let’s make some plans, 33 let´s let´s [get together 34 Ben: [alright] 35 Tyler: I´ll take you out for a drink 36 Ben: okay 37→ Tyler: al[right] 38 Ben: [cool].

The interaction in (18) shows the negotiation of the refusal to a birthday invitation which is realized across multiple turns and is characterized by constant overlaps ([ ]), and various sequences. The interaction is carried out by means of 33 interventions (most being turns and a few collaborative acknowledgments to show agreement, interest, or support to the interlocutor) organized in four sequences: an opening–greeting sequence (lines 1–3), the invitation–refusal sequence (lines 4–20), insistence-response (lines 21–31), a sequence to make alternative plans proposed by the person declining the invitation (lines 32–36), and the terminal exchange (line 37–38). The invitation is presented across various turns and turn-


units (lines 4–13) along with four interventions on the part of the interlocutor to signal cooperation (lines 5, 8, 10, 12). Notice that the refusal response is introduced by means of a pre-refusal asking for additional information ‘oh, what day is it again?’(line 14) and a clarification request in a different turn ‘Friday?’ (line 16). The refusal head act is delayed and presented indirectly, along with a justification of the speaker’s inability to attend the party (line 18). This dispreferred response is followed by an insistence which is realized in three turn-units (lines 21, 23, 25), followed by a postponed second indirect refusal (lines 26–28). After the second refusal, the person declining the invitation opens a new sequence and offers an alternative; this sequence is accomplished successfully across various turns (lines 32–36) and is followed by the terminal exchange (lines 37–38). Example (19) shows an interaction between two Mexican friends (and former classmates) in the same situation. Jorge invites José to his birthday party, but José can’t make it. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (19) Birthday: Jorge issues invitation José refuses invitation (Participant # 11) (Mexico) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1→ Jorge: ¿Qué onda, José? – ¿cómo estás? ‘what’s up, José? – how are you doin’? 2 José: quiúbole, Jorge, ¿cómo estamos? bien, bien, caminando un rato ‘what’s goin’ on?, Jorge, how are we doin’? Fine fine, walking around 3→ Jorge: oye, este, fíjate que – ando buscando a la banda, ves que= ‘hey, um, listen I’m looking for the gang, see’ 4 José: = ¿que has sabido de ellos? – de veras – ya no los he visto = ‘what do you know about them? – really – I haven’t seen them’ 5 Jorge: = pues mira, ahorita, he visto al Negro – y al Zotoluco y todo esto, 6 pero todavía me faltan algunos, y ahorita que te veo pues 7 qué bueno, es la oportunidad, 8 fíjate que voy a cumplir años el viernes, 9 y voy a hacer una fiesta en mi casa, va a ser a las ocho = ‘= well look, just now I saw el Negro – Zotoluco and all of that, but I still need to see a few of them and now that I’ve found you well it’s great, because it’s my chance, to let you know that my birthday is on Friday and I’m gonna have a party at my house, it’s gonna be at eight’ = 10 José: = a las ocho? ‘at eight?’ 11 Jorge: a las ocho, qué onda, te espero, ¿no?


‘at eight, what’s up, I can count on you, can’t I?’ 12 José: pues (0.1) deja ver, no? [← HA] 13 porque ves que tengo un compromiso allá a esa hora. ‘well (0.1) let me see, alright?, because the thing is that I have something else at that time.’ 14 → Jorge: hí:jole, no, no me quedes mal, no::: – o sea no me puedes quedar mal, 15 pues es mi fiesta, es mi cumpleaños y todo esto = ‘darn, don’t let me down, no no no I mean you can’t let me down, it’s my party, it’s my birthday and everything’ = 16 Jose: = híjola, pues déja ver si – puedo o (0.1) 17 a ver si puedo, no? me doy una vuelta [← HA] 18 [estaría bien ver a la banda de nuevo] = ‘darn, well let me see if can or (0.1), let me see if I can, alright? [It’d be great to see the gang again’] 19 → Jorge: [sí, si no puedes] si no puedes a las ocho, 20 este – te espero un poquito más tarde, o sea no hay problema, 21 es fin de semana – más tranquilo – cómo ves? [‘sure, if you can’t], if you can’t at eight, um – I’ll be looking for you a little later, no problem, it’s a weekend, less busy – what do you think?’ 22 José: pues deja ver si puedo, no?, no – no te aseguro nada, 23 pero si puedo, me doy una vuelta, [← HA] 24 osea – saludar de rápido a – [pues – a la banda] ‘well, let me see if I can, alright? I can’t – I can’t promise you anything but if I can, I’ll stop by, [← HA] I mean just to say hey – [well to the gang for a minute’] 25 → Jorge: [a los chavos, no?] [‘to the guys, don’t you think?’] 26 José: sí, sí, deja ver si puedo, ¿no? [← HA] ‘right, right, let me see if I can, okay?’ 27 Jorge: órale, pues= ‘okay, then’ 28 José: = a las ocho el viernes? ‘at eight on Friday?’ 29 Jorge: ajá ‘mhm’ 30 José: tu casa, órale, vemos ‘your house, then, we’ll see’ 31 Jorge: [órale] ‘great’


32 José: [órale], si puedo me doy una vuelta ‘great, if I can I’ll stop by’ 33 → Jorge: sale, te espero, entonces= ‘okay, I’ll be expecting you then’ 34 José: = órale, pues – ahí nos vemos. ‘great, yeah, well – see ya there’

The interaction in (19) shows the sequential development of a refusal response across multiple turns, overlaps ([ ]), and various sequences. The interchange is realized by means of 22 interventions (most being turns and a few interventions) organized in three main sequences: an opening greeting sequence (lines 1–2), the invitation–refusal sequence (lines 3–13), a series of insistence – response sequences (lines 14–32), and the terminal exchange (line 33–34). The invitation is presented in lines 3 and 5–9 along with one intervention on the part of the interlocutor to signal cooperation (line 4). The refusal sequence is achieved by means of a series of temporary indirect refusals across various sequences: the first refusal is realized by means of two turns, a repetition to delay the refusal (line 10) and an indefinite reply as the head act (pues [.01] deja ver, no? ‘well [0.1], let me see, alright?’) (line 12) followed by a reason (line 13). After various direct and indirect insistences on the part of the person making the invitation (lines 14–15, 19–21, 25), the person refusing the invitation resorts to indefinite replies and reasons to decline the invitation across multiple turns (lines 16–18, 22–24). The last insistence-refusal sequence (lines 25–32) is performed by means of temporary refusals in the form of indefinite replies (lines 26, 30, 32) and one clarification request (line 28) in order to further delay the refusal. In general, due to the recurrent use of indefinite replies across multiple turns in this refusal interaction, it appears that this strategy is the preferred option (expected social behavior) of this participant to expresses affiliation with the interlocutor and to end the interaction successfully.

4.4.3.2 Refusing a friend’s suggestion to go to a bar – Bar (–D) Unlike the Birthday situation, when refusing a classmate’s suggestion to skip class and go to a bar, the negotiation of a refusal in this situation shows varying degrees of directness and indirectness in each group. Table 9 shows the distribution of the most frequent strategies for each group. As seen in Table 9, every participant in each group employed a reason or explanation at least once to refuse a friend’s suggestion as well as by other strategies that were employed by less than 50% (10 of 20 participants) of the informants in each group: request for information, indefinite replies, and expressions of positive opinion. Three additional strategies showed variation between the groups in this situation and will be discussed below: direct refusal, postponement, and agreement.


Table 9. Most frequently used strategies among the Americans (N = 20) and Mexicans (N = 20) when refusing a friend’s suggestion (Bar)

Reason/Explanation Direct refusal Request for information Mitigated refusal Postponement Alternative Indefinite reply Agreement Positive opinion

Americans f No. Informants 65 20 20 9 21 9 6 5 12 7 16 9 14 9 31 16 12 9

Mexicans f No. Informants 57 20 45 15 16 8 19 9 20 12 6 3 14 7 17 12 14 8

In most cases, the strategy of request for additional information was realized as a pre-sequence across turns so as to delay a refusal. And indefinite replies occurred across the interaction and were used either as head acts or as post-sequences to end the interaction and to leave the possibility open for future negotiation. Once again, cross-linguistic differences were found between the groups. As shown in Table 9, the Mexican informants often resorted to the following strategies to refuse a classmate’s suggestion: direct refusals (75% or 15 of 20 participants), expressions to postpone a refusal (60% or 12 of 20 participants), and mitigated refusals (45% or 9 of 20 participants). In contrast, these strategies were used by 45% (9 of 20 participants) or less of the American participants. In fact, a t-test comparing the use of direct refusals between the groups was significant, [t(38) = 2.19, p < .05]. The individuals in the Mexican group employed direct refusals as the preferred strategy for refusing a classmate’s suggestion (n = 45), while the Americans utilized this strategy significantly less often (n = 20). Further, among the Mexicans, expressions that postponed the refusal were often employed as post-sequences to end the interaction, and to leave the channels of communication open for future negotiation. As in previous situations, alternatives and the desire to reach a compromise were more salient among the Americans (45% or 9 of 20 participants; n = 16), while this strategy was almost absent among the Mexicans (15% or 3 of 20 participants; n = 6). In addition, similar to the Birthday situation, partial agreements, used to preface a refusal, were the preferred strategy for 80% (16 of 20 participants; n = 31) of the Americans and were utilized by 60% of the Mexican informants (12 of 20 participants; n = 17). With regard to the main refusal response, Figure 12 displays the distribution and frequency for the five different strategies used as head acts in the Bar


Figure 12. Distribution of refusal head acts when refusing a friend’s suggestion (Bar)

situation. It includes the frequency of each head act (Y axis) and the number of participants (Part) that used each head act. As shown in Figure 12, 95% (19 of 20 participants) of the Americans chose a reason as the preferred head act for expressing a refusal indirectly, followed by several strategies that were employed by less than 50% of the participants (direct refusals, mitigated refusals, indefinite replies, alternatives, and postponements). However, 75% (15 of 20 participants) of the Mexicans employed a direct refusal and 60% (12 of 20 participants) preferred reasons, followed by four indirect strategies that were utilized by 30% or less of the Mexicans: mitigated refusals, indefinite replies, alternatives, and postponements. Due to the frequent use of direct refusals among the Mexicans in this situation, it seems that expressing a refusal directly to a friend is not viewed as a threat to the interlocutor’s face. Instead, in this sociocultural context, a direct refusal from a close friend (–D) is seen as the expected social behavior as it expresses affiliation with the interlocutor. Example (20) shows an interaction between two American classmates who are also friends. In this situation, Mike refuses his classmate’s (Ben) suggestion to skip a class and go to a bar. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (20) Bar: Ben suggests skipping class and going to a bar Mike refuses Ben’s suggestion (Participant # 18) (United States) → Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence


1→ Ben: Hey, man how’s it goin’? = 2 Mike: = oh it’s goin’ great = 3→ Ben: = um check this out, 4 I know we got class right now n’ everything, but, uh how ‘bout 5 we go down to the Dinkydome, er, down to the, down to Bon Apetit, 6 I heard there’s this band playin’ down there ((breathes out)), 7 awesome, I’m tellin’ you this jazz combo, we’re not gonna regret it, 8 I’m goin’ for sure, what’s up? you comin’ or what? 9 Mike: ohh I can’t, I have to go to class [← HA]

10 Ben: [oh ma:::n] 11 Mike: [I’ve used my] skip days, 12 and I can’t – I can’t risk getting a lower grade in that, I need every = 13→ Ben: = phht, he doesn’t even take attendance 14 Mike: yeah: they do. 15 Ben: nawwh, [you gotta be payin’ attention, you can just, aw ma::n] 16 Mike: they may [not like, ya know, have to pull out the sheet,] but, they definitely = 17→ Ben: = I’m telling you this is gonna be – it’s gonna be sweet. 18 Mike: I know, but I have to go to class. 19 Ben: [a:lright ] 20 Mike: [I just can’t], I can’t risk [←HA] 21→ Ben: if you gotta go you gotta go, but man I’m telling you 22 ((makes noise with tongue and teeth) – it’s gonna be worth it. 23 Mike: have fun without me. ((laughs)) [←HA] 24 Ben: see ya.

The interaction in (20) is realized by means of 17 interventions and three main sequences: an opening greeting sequence (lines 1–2), the suggestion-refusal sequence with various insistence – response sequences (lines 3–23), and the closing uptake (line 24). After Ben’s suggestion to skip class and go to a bar (lines 3–8), the first refusal response consists of two turn-units: a direct refusal (line 9) and a justification of the refusal (lines 11–12). This reason reflects a cultural situation common in many American universities: a student is allowed two or three unexcused absences (skip days) per semester. The next sequence (lines 13–16) shows two disagreement responses (lines 14, 16) in which Mike contradicts Ben’s opinion regarding whether the professor actually takes attendance or not (lines 13, 15). Finally, after Ben’s indirect insistence to skip class and go to a bar (line 17), the last refusal sequence is accomplished by means of two turn-units, a reason and a direct refusal to close the sequence (lines 18, 20). This is followed by another insistence-refusal sequence (lines 21–23). Unlike the first refusal response which closes with a justification (lines 11–12), in the final refusal sequence, the speaker


chooses a direct refusal to end the sequence, expressing his clear intention not to go to the bar (lines 20, 23). Example (21) shows an interaction between two Mexican students in a comparable situation (Bar). In this situation Jorge asks Victor to skip class and go to a bar. (The refusal head act is marked as HA, and is preceded or followed by supportive moves). (21) Bar: Jorge suggests skipping class and going to a bar Victor refuses Jorge’s suggestion (Mexican # 20)

→ Arrow signals the beginning of a sequence 1→ Jorge: oye, ¿qué crees Vic? ‘hey, guess what Vic?’ 2 Víctor: ¿qué pasó?= ‘what’s up?’ 3 Jorge: = fíjate que aquí a la vuelta en el bar El Charco va a haber un toquín, 4 se va a presentar un grupo de rock, ves que nos late, ¿qué onda? 5 pues vamos, ¿no? – nos volamos la clase, y este, 6 pues nomás es una falta – y vamos al concierto. ‘listen right here around the corner in the bar El Charco there’s gonna be a show, a rock band is gonna be playing and you know we’ll love it, whatdaya think? – let’s go, alright?, we’ll skip the class, and um, it’s just one absence after all – and we’ll go to the concert.’ 7 Víctor: sí:: ((laughter)) – nomás una falta, ¿no güey? ‘yeah ((laughter)) – it’s just one absence, isn’t it dude?’ 8 Jorge: sí, ¿no? ¿cómo ves? ‘yeah, right?, whatdaya say?’ 9 Víctor: no:: – es la – clase de Didáctica, no inventes, no he entrado, 10 y – una falta más y me reprueba la profesora. [← HA] ‘no:: – it’s Didactics class, no kidding, I haven’t gone and – one more absence and the professor flunks me.’ 11→ Jorge: hí::jole, y no – no puedes, este, no sé – dejar tus tareas 12 y que las entreguen – para que vayamos un rato.= ‘darn::, and you can’t, you can’t, um, I don’t know – give your homework to somebody to turn in for you – so that we can go for a while = 13 Víctor: = no, pues sí, lo importante es que yo esté ahí:: en en clase, 14 tú como siempre entras  ((laughter)) 15 pero yo no puedo faltar:: [← HA] = ‘no, well yeah, the important thing is that I be there, in in class, since you’re always there, ((laughter)) but I can’t miss it’

16→ Jorge: 17 18 Víctor: 19 Jorge: 20 Víctor: 21 Jorge: 22 Víctor: 23 24 Jorge: 25 Víctor: 26 → Jorge: 27 Víctor:


sí::, bueno, pues ni hablar, ¿qué onda?, pues te espero ahí o bueno, si te animas, te espero ¿no? terminando la clase  ‘Yeah, well, alright never mind, well what? I’ll be expecting to see you there, maybe, if you decide to show up, I’ll be there, okay?, right after class ’ pues a ver, si todavía estás ahí [← HA] ‘well, maybe, if you’re still there’ órale = ‘great’ = ¿con quién vas a ir? ¿con los cuates? ‘who are you goin’ with? with the guys?’ sí, con los cuates ‘yeah, with the guys’ pss a ver – a ver si les caigo al rato pero ahorita no – [← HA] ‘well, let’s see, let’s see if I show up later, but not right now’ pues sale ‘well okay’ ahorita no puedo ((soft voice)) ‘right now I can’t.’ sale, pues nos vemos = ‘okay, then see ya’ = pues órale. ‘see ya then.’

The interaction in (21) is realized by means of 18 interventions (most being turns and a few collaborative acknowledgments) and is organized in two main sequences: a suggestion-refusal sequence with various insistence – response sequences (lines 1–25) and a terminal exchange (lines 26–27). The suggestion to skip class and go to a bar is presented in lines 3–6 and in two additional insistences (lines 11–12, 16–17). The first two refusal sequences are realized by means of a combination of a blunt refusal (‘no’) and a justification of the refusal response (lines 9–10, 13, 15). In each of these sequences there is an ironic remark on the part of the classmate refusing in response to the interlocutor’s previous utterance (lines 7, 14) delivered in a mocking tone. In this situation, the effect of these ironic remarks enhances the camaraderie between the interlocutors, as evidenced by the in-group solidarity marker güey (‘dude’) (line 7) and laughter to enhance the speaker’s involvement with the interlocutor. The last refusal sequence is mostly accomplished indirectly through indefinite replies which delay the refusal across


the interaction (lines 18, 22), as well as a request for additional information to signal interest and to divert attention away from the refusal (line 20). Overall, as revealed in the examples of the Birthday and Bar situations, the negotiation of face in a solidarity face system (–P, –D) shows different interactional patterns and varying degrees of directness or indirectness for the Mexicans and the Americans. On the one hand, the Mexican informants showed a preference for (direct and indirect) insistences across multiple turns and an inclination to end the interaction with indefinite replies or vague responses. It should also be noted that an insistence following a refusal response is not seen as an imposition in this Mexican community; instead, it represents the expected behavior, reinforces the links of solidarity between the interlocutors, and shows involvement with the interlocutor. On the other hand, the Americans in this study offered alternatives to compensate for a straightforward refusal; in particular, the closings of the interactions were usually realized through a compromise sequence in which options were given to the interlocutor as a way of emphasizing the speaker’s independence face and ending the interaction succesfully. The next section presents the results for internal modification of a refusal response, that is, the strategic selection of linguistic expressions that mitigate or soften a refusal sequence in symmetric and asymmetric face systems.

4.5

Internal modification of the refusal sequence: Expressions of epistemic modality

While the inventory of epistemic expressions varies in both form and function across languages, this section examines the epistemic meaning of four linguistic expressions that were frequently employed by the Mexicans and Americans as a means of weakening or mitigating the negative effects of a direct refusal: mental state predicates (e.g., ‘I think’), modal adverbs (‘probably’), degree modifiers (e.g., ‘sort of ’), and tag questions (e.g., I don’t have to take this class, do I?). Brown and Levinson (1987) examined similar strategies as hedges, which, in their view, represent an important resource for the realization of politeness strategies during the negotiation of a face-threatening act. According to these authors, hedging is achieved by prosody (stress and intonation), lexical items (e.g., ‘sort of ’, ‘quite’), adverbials, and verb phrases such as ‘I think’ or ‘I guess.’ Further, as mentioned in Chapter 2 (Section 2.3.1), by using epistemic expressions, the stance of the speaker reflects probability or possibility in order to indicate security (or lack thereof) or subjectivity with respect to the truth of a proposition expressed. The meaning of epistemic expressions has been examined under different epistemo-


Table 10. Distribution of mitigators during the negotiation of a refusal by situation and by group (Americans = 185; Mexicans = 243)

Americans Farewell Bookstore Advisor Notes Birthday Bar Total Mexicans Farewell Bookstore Advisor Notes Birthday Bar Total

Mental State Predicates f No. Part. 2 2 9 9 32 17 6 9 4 5 11 8 68 f No. Part. 26 11 20 10 32 12 11 7 13 9 10 5 112

Modal Adverbs f 17 14 12 19 8 6 76 f 16 9 3 3 7 3 41

Degree Modifiers No. Part. f No. Part. 12 3 3 9 5 4 9 12 9 12 6 5 8 1 1 4 0 0 27 No. Part. f No. Part. 12 10 8 7 4 4 3 19 11 3 5 3 4 9 6 3 9 6 56

Tag Questions f No. Part. 2 2 2 2 2 2 6 5 0 0 2 2 14 f No. Part. 7 4 1 1 2 2 7 6 9 9 8 7 34

* No. Part = Number of participants

logical frameworks including formal semantics, discourse pragmatics, and cultural scripts in cross-linguistic contexts (Coates 1987; Lyons 1977; Nuyts 2001; Palmer 1986; Wierzbicka 2006). Thus, the objective of this section is to examine the internal modification of a refusal sequence through an analysis of the expressions of epistemic modality used by the Mexicans and Americans to weaken or mitigate their refusal responses in formal and informal situations. Again, the preference for epistemic expressions used to mitigate a refusal varied between the groups and across the situations. Of the 428 mitigators produced by both groups, the Mexican participants employed a greater proportion and a higher frequency of epistemic forms to express a refusal (57%; n = 243) than the Americans (43%; n = 185). Among the Americans, modal adverbs (41%; n = 76 of 185 cases) and mental state predicates (37%; n = 68 of 185 cases) were the two most frequently utilized types of expressions to mitigate refusal responses; degree modifiers (14.5%; n = 27 of 185 cases) were also used to a lesser extent. Conversely, the Mexican informants chose mental state predicates as the default strategy (46%; n = 112 of 243 cases), followed by degree modifiers (23%; n = 56 of 243 cases) and modal adverbs (17%; n = 41 of 243 cases). While both groups employed tag questions as the least frequent means of mitigating a refusal, a higher


preference for these was found among the Mexicans (14%; n = 34 of 243) (Americans [7.5%; n = 14 of 185 cases]). Table 10 shows the distribution of mental state predicates, modal adverbs, degree modifiers, and tag questions employed across the six situations by the Mexicans and Americans. It includes the frequency (f) of each mitigator and the number of participants (No. Part.) who used each form. As shown in Table 10, individual and situational variability in the use of mitigators appears to be the norm when refusing a person of equal or higher status in English or in Spanish. This table also indicates that each mitigating expression was not employed by every participant in each group; rather, the preference for these expressions was conditioned by the situation and the level of formality. In the next section, the frequency and content of each of these forms will be examined and compared between the groups and across the situations.

4.5.1 Mental state predicates As shown in Table 10, 50% or more of the Mexican informants employed a mental state predicate at least once in each of the three situations that feature a hierarchical face system (+P, +D) (Farewell, Bookstore, Advisor), whereas 85% (or 17 of 20 participants) of the Americans employed these forms when refusing a professor’s advice to take an extra class (Advisor, +P, +D). While less than 50% of the Mexicans employed mental state predicates when refusing an invitation, suggestion or request from a person of equal status (Notes, Birthday, Bar), among the Americans, these forms were infrequently employed (45% or less) in five situations, including in refusals to individuals of higher (Farewell, Bookstore) or equal status (Notes, Birthday, Bar). In each group, mental state predicates included a variety of first-person, present tense epistemic verb phrases that varied for each situation. The Americans mainly employed three epistemic verb phrases, with the phrase ‘I think’ (n = 29 of 185 cases) used most frequently to soften a refusal in English; this expression was mostly utilized when refusing a suggestion from a professor (Advice, +P, +D) or a close friend (Bar, –D). Other expressions that were employed less frequently to mitigate a refusal in English included ‘I feel’ (n = 15 of 185) and ‘I guess’ (n = 11 of 185). In contrast, Mexicans expressed a refusal response with a higher degree of tentativeness and mostly relied on the expression (yo) creo (lit. ‘I believe’) (n = 75 of 243) to mitigate a refusal with a person of equal (–D) or higher (–P) status. Unlike the Americans who selected ‘I think’ as the unmarked mitigator, the corresponding form in Spanish, (yo) pienso (‘I think’) represented the marked form and was used infrequently by the Mexicans (n = 10 of 243). Other mental


state predicates that were utilized less frequently to mitigate a refusal included ‘I believe’ and ‘I suppose’ (Americans) and me parece (‘it seems to me...’), (yo) siento (‘I feel’), (yo) considero (‘I consider’), and se me hace (que) (‘it feels to me [that]’) (Mexicans). Overall, among the Mexicans the preference for mental state predicates seems to be conditioned by the level of social status (+P) of the interlocutor, whereas among the Americans it is the situation itself that conditions their use, that is, they occurred most frequently when refusing a professor’s suggestion. Examples (22)–(25) show instances of mental state predicates that were used to mitigate refusals with a person of higher status (+P, +D). Examples (22)–(23) are taken from the English data and (24)–(25) from the Mexican data. (Mental state predicates are bolded): (22) Advisor (+P, +D): Student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class (American #13) Student: 1 Okay, well, I think I probably want to look at the – class 2 description and, make sure I, I can budget my time cuz 3 I still wanna graduate on time (…) (23) Advisor (+P, +D): Student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class (American # 2) Student: 1 Um-kay, well – I don’t know, I, I’m really not, I don’t feel 2 completely, uh like I needed uh, I guess, I feel like 3 I can – get enough out of the books, that I’ve read, and just from 4 previous classes, so, I’m still kinda unsure about it (…). (24) Advisor (+P, +D) – Refusing a professor’s advice to take a class (Mexicant #14) Student: 1 Lo que pasa es que francamente pienso que las otras materias 2 son más importantes, como Literatura Española, Mexicana, 3 pienso que además me pueden servir más 4 y Sociología pues: se me hace materia de relleno – 5 no sé cómo usted la considere… ‘The thing is frankly that I think that the other subjects are more important, like Spanish and Mexican Literature, I think that in addition they can be more useful to me and Sociology well it seems to me that it’s a filler class – I don’t know what you think about it…’ (25) Farewell (+P, +D): Employee declines his boss’ invitation (Mexican # 5) Employee: 1 Ehh, lamentablemente creo que no se va a poder, 2 por eso este, le pido esta disculpa, ¿no? 3 no creo que, este, se pueda por esta por esta vez, ¿no? ‘Um, regrettably I think [lit. ‘I believe’] that it won’t be possible,


that’s why um, I ask you to forgive me, alright? I don’t think that, um, it’s possible this time, ok?’

As shown in the examples (22–23), the presence of mental state predicates during a refusal response in English was preceded by the discourse markers ‘okay’ to express partial agreement and ‘well’ to further delay and mitigate the refusal, as in (22, line 1) and (23, line 1). In example (23) (lines 1–2) an expression of uncertainty (‘I don’t know’) prefaces a series of mental state predicates (‘I don’t feel’, ‘I guess’). With respect to the Mexican data, example (24) shows the interaction of pienso que (‘I think’) and se me hace (‘it seems to me’) (lines 1, 3–4), and example (25) includes creo que (‘I believe’) preceded by the modal adverb lamentablemente (‘regrettably’) (line 1) and followed by another instance of no creo que (‘I don’t believe that’) (line 3) to further mitigate the refusal. While the semantic structure of ‘I think’ in English reflects a thinking process and uncertainty or subjective thinking as in (22, line 1), the semantic component of ‘(yo) pienso (‘I think’) in Spanish seems to have a higher degree of certainty than the English ‘I think.’ For instance, in example (24) pienso que (line 1) is prefaced by the adverb francamente (‘frankly’) that intensifies the speaker’s response and conveys a relatively higher degree of confidence when presenting a tentative response. In this case, (yo) pienso (‘I think’) in Spanish seems to present evidence that is considered crucial while presenting the content of the proposition more tentatively; this refusal response is followed by an additional mental verb to close the refusal response and to increase the level of tentativeness, as in (24, line 4, se me hace ‘it seems to me’). In these examples, the interaction of various mental state predicates with discourse markers (‘well’), modal adverbs, and expressions of uncertainty reflects hesitance or a lack of commitment. That is, the presence of mental state predicates seems to activate a mental frame of subjectivity or tentativeness in the speaker’s mind and gives the interlocutor the impression that the information being presented contains subjective information, feelings, and attitudes that are presented cautiously in response to the power imbalance between the two interlocutors. Finally, in accordance with Nuyts’ (2001) observations on epistemic modality, mental state verbs are considered a discourse strategy that is intentionally utilized by interlocutors to negotiate face mainly in interactions with a person of higher status. Moreover, due to their excessive use in the Mexican data (i.e., positively marked behavior), these epistemic verb phrases, which weaken or mitigate a refusal, may be open to a polite interpretation in this community of practice.


4.5.2 Modal adverbs Cross-cultural differences between the groups were observed with respect to the preference for modal adverbs used to mitigate a refusal. The selection of these mitigators was conditioned by the degree of social distance between the interlocutors (+/– D) and the situation. As shown in Table 10, the majority of the Americans chose a modal adverb at least once to soften a refusal in four situations featuring a +D relationship (Farewell and Notes [60% or 12 of 20 participants]; Bookstore and Advisor [45% or 9 of 20 participants]). The Mexicans, however, selected modal adverbs only when refusing a boss in two situations (Farewell [60% or 12 of 20 participants], Bookstore [35% or 7 of 20 participants]). Unlike the Americans whose preference for modal adverbs was equal to or greater than 45% in four situations (60% or 12 of 20 participants, Farewell, Notes) (45% or 9 of 20 participants, Bookstore, Advisor), 20% (4 of 20 participants) or fewer of the Mexican informants occasionally employed modal adverbs when refusing a professor (Advisor), a classmate (Notes), or a friend (Birthday, Bar). While the inventory of modal adverbs varies in form, function, and frequency across languages, the following forms were identified in the data of each group. The Americans employed three modal adverbs at the beginning and in the middle of a refusal sequence such as: ‘maybe,’ ‘probably,’ and ‘unfortunately,’ with ‘maybe’ (n = 47 of 185 items) and ‘probably’ (n = 19 of 185) representing the adverbs most frequently employed to refuse a person of equal or higher status. In contrast, the individuals in the Mexican group selected a wider variety of modal adverbs in order to express their refusal responses more tentatively: tal vez (‘maybe’), quizá(s) (‘perhaps’), a la mejor (a variant of a lo mejor) (‘maybe’), posiblemente (‘possibly’), lamentablemente (‘regrettably’), desafortunadamente (‘unfortunately’), and desgraciadamente ( lit. ‘disgracefully’ ‘unfortunately’); of these, tal vez (‘maybe’) (n = 17 of 243 cases) was often employed for mitigating refusals in the Spanish data, and a la mejor (n = 7 of 243 cases) to a lesser degreee. Among both groups during the negotiation of a refusal, modal adverbs cooccurred with other verbal and non-verbal strategies that increased the degree of tentativeness. For example, in example (22, line 1) ‘probably’ is prefaced by two discourse markers (‘okay,’ ‘well’) and a mental state predicate (‘I think’) and in example (25, line 1) lamentablemente (‘regrettably’) is prefaced by a hesitator ‘ehh’ followed by the unmarked epistemic verb phrase in Spanish creo que (‘I believe’). The adverb a la mejor (‘maybe’) was often used to express an alternative and cooccurred with the conditional form to increase levels of politeness, as in the following refusal to the boss “…no podría ayudarle, a la mejor en otra ocasión’ (‘…I wouldn’t be able to help you [you-FORMAL], maybe another time’) (Bookstore +P, +D). In these examples, the co-occurrence of various expressions of epistemic


modality serves to increase the speaker’s hesitation as well as to reflect his lack of knowledge, and current thinking process regarding producing a tentative and polite refusal response. Finally, while Nuyts (2001) does not consider epistemic adverbs a discourse strategy, in the current study the presence of these expressions in refusal sequences promotes the negotiation of face between the interlocutors and their use may be open to a polite interpretation, thus here they did function as a discourse strategy. Most importantly, by using various modal adverbs across a refusal sequence in specific situations the speaker increases the degree of tentativeness and expresses subjectivity, and thus, these forms may be open to a polite interpretation by the interlocutor.

4.5.3 Degree modifiers As shown in Table 10, the preference for degree modifiers in a refusal sequence was more frequent among the Mexicans (n = 56 of 243 cases) (Americans [n = 27 of 185 cases]). Although degree modifiers are realized with different forms and functions across languages, the Americans mainly employed three forms: ‘sort of,’ ‘kind of,’ ‘a little’ + adjective, whereas the Mexicans used a wider variety of degree modifiers and expressed a higher degree of tentativeness: como que (‘sort of like’), un tanto imposible (‘a little bit impossible’), es medio difícil (‘it’s kind of difficult’), la clase es algo difícil (‘the class is somewhat difficult’), and creo que para mí sería un poco molesto (‘I think that for me it would be a little bit bothersome’). Among the Americans, degree modifiers commonly occurred when refusing a professor’s suggestion to take a class (Advisor, 45% or 9 of 20 participants). Conversely, the Mexicans employed a variety of degree modifiers in two situations of unequal status: when refusing a professor’s suggestion (Advisor, 55% or 11 of 20 participants) and when declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell, 40% or 8 participants). In general, it appears that the Mexicans and the Americans express varying degrees of tentativeness and politeness through the use of degree modifiers when refusing a professor’s suggestion. However, unlike the Americans, who barely used degree modifiers when declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell, 3 of 20 participants), in this situation 40% (or 8 of 20 participants) of the Mexicans expressed their refusals more tentatively and politely by means of a variety of degree modifiers. Examples of degree modifiers from the American and Mexican data are shown in the refusal responses in (26) and (27), respectively: (Mitigators are shown in bold)


(26) Advisor (+P, +D): Student refuses a professor’s suggestion to take a class (American # 11) Student: 1 Hmm – I don’t know – I feel like already I have kind of a heavy load 2 next semester, and I don’t know, linguistics – it’s just not something, 3 I really enjoy doing, it seems like it’d be a lot of – extra work, 4 ya know – I don’t think, I really wanna do that. (27) Farewell (+P, +D): Employee declines an invitation from his boss (Mexican # 3) Employee: ((three lines of transcript omitted)) 1 … entonces creo que para mí sería un poco 2 pues molesto y que les tuviera yo que decir que 3 me acompañaran o que me esperaran algo así, ¿no? 4 porque imagínese – entrar a las 7 y salir a las 10 de la noche 5 y como que regresar, como que no sería algo válido 6 ¿no? en cuanto a esto, entonces pues 7 creo que me gustaría que me disculpara en ese aspecto ¿no? ‘so I believe that for me it would be a little, well, bothersome and I would have to tell them to come with me or to wait for me or something like that, right? because think about it – coming in at 7 and leaving at 10 at night and it’s sort of like coming back, sort of wouldn’t be fair, right?, in regard to this, then well I believe that I would like you to excuse me in this respect, alright?’

As shown in the examples in (26) and (27), degree modifiers co-occurred with other mitigators in the same refusal response. In (26) the refusal response to a professor is also mitigated by means of various mental state predicates (‘I feel’ ‘it seems’) (lines 1, 3) and a degree modifier (‘kind of a heavy load’) (line 1). Similarly, in the Spanish refusal in (27) the degree modifiers un poco + adjective (‘a little’) (line 1) and como que (‘sort of ’) used twice (line 5) occurred in combination with the mental state predicate commonly employed in Spanish to attenuate a refusal response ‘creo que.. (‘I believe that’) (lines 1, 7). Further, in this example, the recurrent use of the conditional (sería ‘it would be’; me gustaría ‘I would like’) increases the level of formality and, in this situation, this form may be open to a polite interpretation (lines 1, 5, 7). In general, the interaction of various mitigators in the same refusal response functions to express a lack of commitment on the part of the speaker and increases the degree of subjectivity when negotiating a refusal. Finally, due to their frequent occurrence across the refusal sequence, degree modifiers can be considered a discourse strategy by which a speaker strategically chooses one or various


forms to mitigate a refusal in order to create interactional expectations on the part of the interlocutor.

4.5.4 Tag questions While diversified in form and function across languages, tag questions are interrogative expressions, or particles with high rising intonation, that occur at the end of an utterance to request confirmation of the speaker’s message. Due to their interrogative nature, tag questions often require the interlocutor’s uptake. By using tag questions, the speaker expects and assumes compliance from the interlocutor in addition to mitigating the direct effects of an imperative (e.g., ‘close the door, will you?’). Other instances of this strategy include ‘chains of tag questions’ characteristic of English conversation (e.g., A: ‘Lovely shoes, aren’t they?,’ B: ‘Aren’t they nice?,’ A: ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’) (Wierzbicka 2003: 41). In this section, I will be concerned with the epistemic function of tag questions that are used to express relational work during the negotiation of a refusal, and in certain contexts these forms may be open to a polite interpretation. As shown in Table 10, the realization of tag questions when refusing a person of equal or higher status was more frequent among the Mexicans (n = 34 of 243 cases) across the six situations than among the Americans (n = 14 of 185) and were completely absent in the American data from the Birthday situation (–P, –D). Specifically, among the Mexicans tag questions were employed by a higher number of participants when refusing a person of equal status where the relationship between them was either –D or +D (Birthday, –D [9 of 20 participants]; Bar, –D [7 of 20 participants]; Notes, +D [6 of 20 participants]), whereas among the Americans, these forms were only occasionally employed when refusing to lend notes to a classmate (+D) (5 of 20 participants) and were rather infrequent when refusing a person of higher status (+P) (Farewell, Bookstore, Advisor) or equal status (–D) (Bar) status (2 of 20 participants in each situation). The tag questions identified in the Mexican and American data were comprised of seven different forms for each group. These forms often occurred in turn-final position and were followed by the interlocutor’s uptake: Americans: ‘don’t they?,’ ‘is that okay?,’ ‘is it?,’ ‘is that correct?,’ ‘is that cool?,’ ‘right?,’ ‘alright?’; Mexicans: ¿no? (‘right?’), ¿verdad? (lit. truth ‘right?’), ¿me entiendes? (‘do you know what I mean?’), ¿usted cree? (‘don’t you think?’), ¿o sí? (‘isn’t it?’) , ¿cómo ves? (‘what do you think?’) and ¿no crees? (‘don’t you think?’). Examples (28) and (29) show the presence of tag questions during a refusal sequence in English and Spanish, respectively. (Tag questions are shown in bold).


(28) Notes (–D): Ben: requests class notes Nathan: refuses to lend notes (American #8) Ben: 1 Hey, man, ya know, I I know that exam’s comin’ up n’ everything, 2 I was wonderin’ ya know, if maybe I could I could borrow 3 your notes cuz, I missed a bunch a, a bunch a class. Nathan: 4 well, ya know, I kinda need ‘em cuz – cuz I got studying to do, 5 I mean, but uh, ya know, if you want we could we could get 6 together a couple people, and do a study group for the (...) exam, 7 is that okay? Ben: 8 uh, yeah, sure that’s okay. Nathan: 9 cool.

In the interaction in (28), the speaker refusing to lend the notes expresses high levels of mitigation: the refusal is weakened by means of the discourse markers ‘you know’ which appeals for the interlocutor’s conversational cooperation (lines 4–5), ‘I mean’ which delays the refusal and shows hesitance (line 5), the degree modifier ‘kinda’ (line 4), and the tag question (‘is that okay?’) to close the refusal response (line 7), followed by the addressee’s positive uptake (line 8). Next, in the exchange between two Mexican friends in (29), after the friend issuing the invitation insists and asks his friend to make an effort to attend his party (lines 19–20), the refusal response is presented tentatively by means of various mitigators:

(29) Birthday (–D): Jorge: Issues invitation Jezrael: Refuses invitation (Mexican # 13) (Interaction begins with third insistence to attend a birthday party) ((12 turns omitted)) Jorge: 19 Ah, pero ¿por qué no llegas con nosotros? 20 te estás un rato en la fiesta y ya de ahí nos vamos para la tocada. ‘aw, but why don’t you come and spend some time with us? you can stay for a while at the party and from there we leave for the show.’ Jezrael: 21 no, pues sí, mira, ves que mira, va a estar cañón porque 22 como ves que es viernes, a la mejor agarramos la jarra, 23 y pos ¿quién sabe? ¿no? o sea pero igual, pero, no, es que sí sí, 24 sí sería cañón, ¿no?, 25 si no, aguántame, y o sea para otra vez, 26 o sea festejamos tu cumpleaños el próximo viernes, 27 ahí en el antro, ¿cómo ves? ‘no, but yeah, look the thing is it’s gonna be really tough because ya know it’s Friday, and maybe we’ll get drunk


and then who knows?, right?, I mean it’s about the same, but no, it’s that yeah yeah it would be tough, wouldn’t it? if not, then hang on, and then later, I mean, we’ll celebrate your birthday next Friday, at the bar, what do you think?’ Jorge: 28 pues bueno, te vas a perder la fiesta. ‘okay then, you’re gonna miss the party.’

In the interaction above, the refusal is prefaced by the marker no, pues sí (‘no, but yeah’) (line 21) which mitigates the upcoming explanation, a modal adverb a la mejor (‘maybe’) to express uncertainty (line 22), and the conditional (sí sería cañon, ¿no? ‘it would be really tough, wouldn’t it?’) (line 24). The refusal sequence is accomplished with the tag question ¿cómo ves? (‘what do you think?’) (line 27) which asks for the interlocutor’s confirmation. At the same time, it mitigates the previous refusal sequence, and then is followed by the addressee’s turn to close the sequence (line 28). Overall, a tag question is considered a discourse strategy and co-occurs with other mitigators across the interaction. By using a tag question during a refusal sequence, the speaker shows hesitation and a lack of commitment towards what he has said. By doing so, the speaker expresses relational work with the interlocutor by means of requesting confirmation and compliance with a previous refusal response. Due to the interactive nature of tag questions, their presence serves to make a refusal sequence more tentative; at the same time, these forms may be open to a polite interpretation on the part of the interlocutor.

4.6

Concluding remarks

The findings presented in this chapter illustrate that the refusal behavior of American (Minnesota, middle class) and Mexican (Tlaxcala, lower-middle class) male university students shows similarities and differences during the negotiation of a refusal in symmetric (–P, [+/–D]) and asymmetric (+P, [+D]) relationships across six refusal situations. The negotiation of a refusal was realized by means of a variety of pragmatic strategies (direct and indirect refusals, adjuncts to refusals) that comprise the speech-act set of refusing and express relational work (Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2005). Through the strategic selection of linguistic strategies that are employed to negotiate a refusal, face is renegotiated and interactionally achieved. Most importantly, the focus of this analysis centered on linguistic politeness, one aspect of relational work that sees social behavior in excess (marked


social value). As such, some of the strategies that were frequently used to negotiate face may be open to a polite interpreration in socially appropriate ways. In addition, this chapter examined four mitigators that internally modify a refusal sequence, that is, linguistic elements that weaken or soften a refusal response across the interaction (mental state predicates, modal adverbs, degree modifiers, and tag questions). As was noted, the preference for the pragmatic strategies varied not only cross-linguistically between the groups (Mexicans vs. Americans), but also within each group, across the six situations, and for the three face systems (hierarchical [+P, +D], deference [–P, +D], solidarity [–P, –D]). While individual variation is the norm during the negotiation of face, this chapter discussed different linguistic realization patterns that were identified in each group; some of these included degrees of directness and indirectness, the preference for insistence as an instance of involvement (expected social behavior) among the Mexicans, and a tendency to compromise after a refusal response among the Americans. With respect to the most frequently used strategies to express relational work when refusing in situations of equal or higher status, both groups often employed reasons or explanations, direct refusals, and expressions of agreement. In addition to these strategies, each group favored two different strategies across the six situations and throughout the interaction. Namely, the Americans showed a strong preference for alternatives and requests for additional information, whereas the Mexicans frequently resorted to mitigated refusals and indefinite replies. In the U.S. community examined in this study, suggesting alternatives and asking questions are two strategies that may express politeness in specific situations and which reflect concern for the interlocutors’ independence face (i.e., not imposing, giving options, and asking questions to appear polite), as in Lakoff ’s (1990) notion of deference politeness. Among the members of the Mexican community analyzed here, however, mitigated refusals and indefinite replies represent two recurrent strategies that allow the person refusing to negotiate face and to maintain the flow of conversation between the interlocutors. By using these strategies, the person refusing may leave the outcome of the interaction open, delay a refusal across various turns, and increase the degree of subjectivity in the interlocutor’s mind, and hence, such strategies may be open to polite interpretation in specific situations. Further, the results of the current study showed that the preference for particular pragmatic strategies varied between the groups according to each face system. For instance, although the negotiation of a refusal was mostly realized by means of indirect refusals in each group, higher degrees of indirectness were observed among the Mexicans and across the three face systems. In particular, when declining an invitation the Mexicans often expressed a refusal indirectly by means of reasons or explanations, mitigated refusals, indefinite replies, expres-


sions to postpone a refusal, and expressions of gratitude as positive supportive facework. In contrast, the Americans showed a strong tendency to express a refusal indirectly by means of alternatives to reach a compromise and requests for additional information. Also, in situations of equal status expressing deference (+D) and solidarity (–D), the Americans in this study increased the negotiation of face by means of positive supportive facework to preface a refusal response (positive opinion, agreement, empathy, willingness, gratitude); in this context, these expressions may be interpreted as realizations of polite behavior. In the present study, the speech act of refusing was analyzed by means of examining refusal sequences across the interaction. Although a refusal response was realized across multiple turns and throughout the interaction, the construction of sequences and the outcome of the situations varied for each group. For instance, among the Mexicans the sequential realization of a refusal response appears to be constructed by means of a series of insistences and vague responses across the interaction, whereas among the Americans, the outcome of a refusal response is often constructed through the use of a compromise-response sequence. Thus, among the Americans the resolution of a refusal was clearly communicated, whereas for the Mexicans in this study the message of a refusal response required frequent attempts at relational work and inference on the part of the interlocutor, including an understanding of the cultural values of formality, vagueness, and tentativeness. Finally, this chapter examined the internal modification of refusal sequences by means of an analysis of four expressions of epistemic modality that weaken or mitigate a refusal response: mental state predicates, modal adverbs, degree modifiers, and tag questions. Cross-linguistic differences were found between the groups. Among the Americans ‘I think’ and ‘probably’ were frequently employed to enact values of independence and a lack of commitment. Among the Mexicans, the predominant forms employed to mitigate a refusal included creo (‘I believe’) and various degree modifiers (e.g., un poquito ‘a little bit’) that conveyed higher degrees of tentativeness and involvement with the interlocutor. It was also noted that the frequent occurrence of epistemic expressions across refusal interactions makes refusal sequences more tentative and conveys various degrees of politeness. These expressions were strategically selected by both groups and often co-occurred with other mitigators across a refusal sequence. As an interactional resource, mitigation functions as a discourse strategy to express hesitance, a lack of commitment towards the proposition expressed, and, in specific situations, these mitigators may be open to a polite interpretation. In the next chapter, the participants’ perceptions of politeness during the negotiation of a refusal in symmetric and asymmetric situations will be examined and explained in each sociocultural context, Mexico and the United States.

chapter 5

Results Perceptions of politeness: Cultural values of refusals among Mexicans and Americans

5.1

Introduction

This chapter utilizes the notion of metapragmatic politeness to describe and explain how the Mexicans and the Americans in the current study talk about politeness as a concept in everyday interaction, and what they perceive politeness to be in their respective sociocultural contexts in Mexico and the United States. In particular, this chapter will take a close look at the participants’ perceptions of politeness during the negotiation of a refusal by means of retrospective verbal reports. As mentioned previously and consistent with research in second language pragmatics and psychology (Cohen 1998, 2004; Ericsson & Simon 1993), since the verbal report data were collected shortly after the role-play session, it is believed that much information is still available in the short-term memory of the participants and can be directly reported or used as ‘retrieval cues.’ Most importantly, the perception data obtained from the verbal reports will be used to validate the results of the role-play data discussed in Chapter 4. In this chapter, the results regarding the perception of refusals of the Mexicans and the Americans will be presented with respect to: 1. cognition (i.e., what information participants attended to during each refusal interaction) (Section 5.2); 2. the degree of directness or indirectness perceived during a refusal interaction (Section 5.3); and, 3. the perception regarding an insistence after declining an invitation in Mexico and the United States (Section 5.4), followed by the concluding remarks for this chapter (5.5).

5.2

Cognition: Attention to linguistic and sociocultural information

The purpose of this section is to reveal what information the Mexican and the American informants in this study reported attending to during the execution of a


refusal. To obtain this information, immediately after the completion of the roleplay session, every participant was asked by the researcher to answer the following questions while they listened to each taped interaction: “What were you paying attention to when you refused in this situation?” “What was the first thing that came to your mind during the interaction?” The results will be presented for each face system and will include the six situations (hierarchical [+P, +D: Advisor, Farewell, Bookstore], deference [–P +D: Notes], and solidarity [–P, –D: Birthday, Bar]).

5.2.1 Perception of refusals in a hierarchical face system (+P, +D) An analysis of the retrospective verbal reports indicated that the Mexican and the American participants had many things on their minds when performing a refusal in asymmetric situations. Both groups were conscious of the difference in power when refusing an interlocutor of higher status (+P), but differed in terms of the degree of certainty for (culturally appropriate means of) expressing a tentative, polite, or straightforward refusal. For instance, when refusing a professor’s advice both groups indicated that they tried to express a refusal politely, but differences were noted with respect to the clarity of the message conveyed and the directness of the refusal. This is shown in the comments in (1) and (2) below, for the Americans and for the Mexicans, respectively: (1) Advisor – Refusing a professor’s suggestion to take a class (Americans) a. I was trying to politely let him know that I couldn’t this semester, that it wasn’t working out and it seemed to me that he thought it’d be a good idea, rather than I needed to take it, so I thought that I was I was trying to be very polite and trying not to offend him, but at the same time letting him know that I can’t do it. (American #17) b. Thinking that I put a lot of time into organizing my schedule and he had a suggestion, I asked him if it was going to affect graduation; I appreciated his input and I wanted to make that known, but at the same time I wasn’t willing to change. (American #16) (2) Advisor – Refusing a professor’s suggestion to take a class (Mexicans) a. … pues es que como así decirle en un ‘no’ seco… no, pues no se puede, … pues darle vueltas, o no irme directo, o sea encontrar por dónde decirle que no, o sea… decirle que la verdad ‘no podía’, nomás que intentaba darle vueltas, por eso no, no podía. (Mexican #1) ‘well it’s like telling him flat out ‘no’… no, well it’s not possible … you have to beat around the bush, or not be so direct, in other words find a way to tell him no, in other words… to tell him that the truth was

Chapter 5. Results: Perceptions of politeness 141

b.

“I couldn’t,” I simply tried to beat around the bush for that reason, I couldn’t’. ...pensaba en que me creyera, y buscar la manera de decirle que ‘no’ de una manera que no se sintiera molesto. (Mexican #13) ‘… I thought about making him believe me and looking for a way to tell him ‘no’ in such a way that he wouldn’t feel annoyed’.

As seen in the examples in (1), during a refusal interaction the Americans thought that it was important to express a refusal in a way that is both polite and straightforward (1a), but a the same time, it was important to the student that the adviser recognize his personal efforts and to be seen as someone who is capable of making his own decisions (1b). In contrast, some of the Mexicans said that they could not refuse an advisor with a blunt ‘no’, but rather, they felt the need to express their refusal indirectly and tentatively (2a), and politely without offending the professor (2b). In general, these reports complement the role-play results with respect to the high frequency of reasons or explanations in the Mexican data when refusing a professor (Advisor, n = 64), whereas this strategy was utilized less often by the Americans (n = 36). The boss-employee relationship in the Bookstore and Farewell situations was also perceived differently by each group. The Americans in the present study expected the boss to respect the plans they had previously made, to offer alternatives, and not to insist, as shown in the examples (3) and (4): (3) Bookstore – Refusing a boss’ request to stay at work late (Americans) a. (I was thinking) I don’t want to create friction at work, so I want to have a reason that would move the pressure elsewhere. (American #18) b. I was trying to think… if I have conflicting plans, it’s just out of the question; I’d rather be fired, than to compromise. (American #3) c. I was thinking, let’s work out something, try to compromise, it makes things easier if I just suggested it, to avoid further problems, by compromising, he’ll realize you can work [at another time], but it upset me a bit because he pushed it a little harder than I thought. (American #2) (4) Farewell – Declining a boss’ invitation (Americans) I was paying attention to his feelings, I was trying to be very tactful. (American #18)

As illustrated in the verbal reports shown in (3), when refusing a boss’ invitation the Americans conveyed a refusal by means of reasons in order to soften a direct refusal and so as not to create friction in the situation (3a); at the same time, the Americans focused their attention on being tactful and trying not to offend the


interlocutor (4). Further, in the Bookstore situation, most Americans reported that if they already had plans, they expected the boss to respect their priorities (3b) and to offer alternative times, rather than one specific time, that the work could be done in order to create less tension during the interaction, as commented by one participant (3c). On the contrary, the Mexicans perceived the boss as an authority figure who had power over the employee. During the refusal interactions, the Mexicans reported that they were thinking about respect, politeness and formality, and frequent justifications, as seen in the comments in (5) and (6):

.

(5) Bookstore – Refusing a boss’ request to stay late at work (Mexicans) a. (pensando…) que no podía, pues indirectamente, o sea, a personas de nivel más alto que yo, pues no les puedo decir que ‘no,’ así directo, es, como si dijéramos, una falta de respeto hacia la persona – me voy por las ramas. (Mexican #1) ‘(thinking…) that I couldn’t, well indirectly, I mean, to people at a higher level that I, well I can’t tell them ‘no,’ so directly, it’s, as if we would say, a lack of respect toward the person – I beat around the bush’ b. … tratar de posponer la situación, dejarla abierta. (Mexican #12) ‘… I try to put off the situation, to leave it open’. (6) Farewell – Declining a boss’ invitation (Mexicans) a. …(una) justificación familiar lo va a hacer entender mi rechazo cortés, ser barbero y luego darle la excusa sobre mi familia, para que si en el futuro le pido un favor, no me lo niegue. (#18) ‘(a) justification having to do with the family would make him understand my polite refusal, to be a brown noser and then to give him an excuse having to do with my family, so that if in the future I ask him for a favor, he wouldn’t deny me it.’ b. Primero una letanía y después el ‘no’, primero hay que darle un agradeci miento, una justificación, y luego el ‘no’. ‘First a litany and then the ‘no’, first you have to thank him, give him a justification and then the ‘no’. c. … creo que siempre en un trabajo, yo creo que, o sea, si uno quiere aspirar a un trabajo, nunca debe decir ‘no’, (pensando…) en lo que me han dicho muchos amigos que ocupan buenos puestos en su trabajo, en que ellos siempre me dan sus consejos: “cuando te pida el jefe trabajo, tú no digas que ‘no’, tú dile siempre que sí y te va a ir bien,” (pensando…) en ser solidario, que vea [el jefe] que me gusta trabajar, que soy dinámico, que soy activo. (Mexican #13)


‘I think that always, in a work situation, I think that, I mean if one aspires to a certain job, one should never say ‘no’, (thinking…) about what a lot of my friends that have high positions at their jobs have told me, in that they have always given me their advice: “when the boss asks you to work, you don’t say no, you just always tell him yes and then things will go well for you,” (thinking…) about being part of the team, that he [the boss] would see that I like to work, that I’m dynamic, that I’m active.’

As shown in the examples in (5) and (6), the Mexicans in this study focused their attention on what the boss’ reaction would be towards them, or what negative consequences the interaction might have if they refused. Unlike the Americans who often selected strategic politeness as a means of being tactful and avoiding friction, the tendency among the Mexicans was to convey deference politeness by means of various indirect strategies (i.e., detailed and vague explanations) and to show respect to the boss, as reported in (5a). In fact, it was reported that one should never say ‘no’ to a boss so as to maintain a good relationship with him and to keep future job opportunities open (6c). Further, instead of saying ‘no’ directly and expressing their true reasons for refusing, most Mexicans reported that they focused their attention on providing ‘believable’ and specific excuses related to the family, school, and transportation, as can be seen in (6a), whereas most of the Americans provided a general reason, such as in (3b) (e.g., ‘conflicting plans’). Expressing support to the boss was observed in the role-play data of five Mexican participants who accepted rather than refused the boss’ request (in the Bookstore situation) because they wanted to show cooperation and solidarity with him. These participants commented that volunteering to help the boss in this situation would provide them with better job opportunities and would foster a better relationship with the boss in the future. Most importantly, unlike the Americans who reported that it was important to say ‘no’ at the beginning of a refusal sequence, most of the Mexicans in this study commented that a refusal response was often expressed in the following order: gratitude, specific reason +(optional) direct refusal. Furthermore, among the Americans a compromise was the expected (and appropriate) strategy for ending the Bookstore or Farewell interactions, whereas the Mexicans reported that they preferred to leave the situation open or vague to politely close the interaction. Once again, these reports complement the role-play data presented in Chapter 4. Specifically, among the Americans, alternatives were frequently selected to end an interaction appropriately with the boss in order to reach a compromise (Farewell, Bookstore), whereas among the Mexicans a series of indefinite replies and a high frequency of mitigated responses were the pre-


ferred strategies employed to negotiate a refusal appropriately and politely without offending the boss. Declining an invitation from a boss (Farewell) was perceived as more formal and more difficult to refuse by the Mexicans than by the Americans. While the majority of the Americans said that this situation was less difficult to refuse, the Mexicans commented that declining a boss’ invitation was difficult, especially because refusing a boss’ invitation was considered rude in this Mexican community, as reported by the two participants in (7): (7) Farewell – Declining an invitation from a boss (Mexicans) a. Estaba pensando que era muy difícil decir un ‘no’ – muy difícil decir ‘no’ a una persona que te ha apoyado. (Mexican #2) ‘I was thinking that it was very hard to say ‘no’ – very difficult to say ‘no’ to a person who has supported you.’ b. Pensaba en que si él me apoyó, sería una grosería casi no asistir. (Mexican #12). ‘I was thinking that if he supported me, it would be almost rude not to go’

Similarly, other Mexican participants commented that it was better not to refuse a boss’ invitation directly due to the support they had received before, as in (7a). As a result, not complying with the boss’ request would be considered rude (7b). The Americans, on the other hand, commented that during a refusal interaction they were concerned about not hurting the boss’ feelings, but at the same time it was important for them to be direct and straightforward when refusing an invitation.

5.2.2 Perception of refusals in a deference face system (–P, +D) A refusal to a person of equal status in a distant relationship (+D) was also perceived differently by the Mexicans and the Americans. Both groups reported that refusing to lend their notes to a classmate was a very uncomfortable situation. Unlike the majority of the Mexican participants who commented that they preferred being indirect when refusing a classmate, the Americans consistently reported an inclination towards a direct and straightforward response. More specifically, the Americans were direct in expressing their true feelings, inclinations, and reasons; in fact, some said that the classmate’s request bothered them because it inconvenienced them. When the Americans refused the classmate’s request to borrow the notes, they reported the following thoughts shown in (8):


(8) Notes – Refusing to lend notes to a classmate (Americans)

a. This is my education, ah if he wants his education, he needs to work too,

b. c. d. e. f.

I’m not going to school to educate some other kid. (American #4) I thought ‘what a jerk,’ I do work hard, this is not high school, this is college, so I didn’t feel bad for him at all. (American #7) Basically, just being clear that I wasn’t going to lend him the notes, I mean… I could’ve just told him ‘no’, but I thought that the point came through clear enough. (American #9) It bothers me when people want the notes; (thinking) get away from me (American #10) It’s inconvenient for me. (American #13) I need (the notes) myself, then to accuse him of cheating or something like that (#8)

As can be seen in 8(a–c), clarity, directness, independence, and honesty were cultural values that predominated among these Americans. The American way of thinking also involved ethical values of ‘fairness’ (i.e., “It’s not fair to lend my notes”) because in the American culture lending one’s notes seems to constitute an act of cheating in an academic setting (8f). These values were also identified in the English role-play data, suggesting that what the Americans thought and felt while refusing, they also expressed directly to the interlocutor in face-to-face interaction (8 d–e). Conversely, the Mexican participants often showed concern for the interlocutor in the Notes situation, and tried to think of ways to help the classmate get the notes. Although a few Mexicans reported thoughts similar to those shown in (8), they never expressed their feelings and inclinations directly to the classmate during the role-play interaction; instead, they opted for excuses or explanations as the default strategy to refuse, as illustrated in the examples in (9): (9) Notes- Refusing to lend the notes to a classmate (Mexicans) a. Sentí ga::cho, buscaba una justificación para que no se sintiera mal él. (Mexican #6) ‘I felt ho::rrible, I was looking for an excuse so that he wouldn’t feel bad.’ b. 1 Uno busca un pretexto, que él bien ya sabe que es una excusa clásica 2 de que no se los quiero prestar, pero no es una forma directa, 3 él lo entiende y yo lo entiendo (…) 4 uno piensa cómo lo van a ver si decimos que ‘no’, 5 con una justificación deja abierta la posibilidad 6 de negociar para el futuro. (Mexican #12) ‘One looks for a pretext, that he already knows is a classic excuse that I don’t want to lend them to him, but, it isn’t in a direct way, he under-


stands it and I understand it (…) one thinks how will they take it if we tell them ‘no’, but with a justification it leaves the possibility of negotiation open for the future’ c. Participant #15: 1 (pensando…) que a mí me cuesta estar en clase y estar 2 poniendo atención y esforzándome en hacer mis tareas y mis 3 trabajos, y que ya nomás llegue y prestámelos, pues… . ‘(thinking…) that it’s hard for me to be in class and paying attention and making an effort to do my homework and my papers, and that he just shows up and lend them to me, well…’ Researcher: 4 y ¿por qué no le dijiste eso directamente? ‘and why didn’t you tell him that directly?’ Participant #15: 5 …pues en realidad, se los dejé porque pues por lo mismo, 6 siento que yo cuido mi imagen y a la mejor no lastimarlo y no 7 hacerlo sentir mal, pues no puedo, no por X o Y. ‘… well, in reality, I gave them to him for the same reason, I feel like I maintain my image and that it’s better not to hurt him and not to make him feel bad, well I can’t for X or Y reason.’

Unlike the Americans whose reasons or accounts conveyed their true feelings which were expressed in clear and direct refusals, among the Mexicans reasons were indirectly employed to express a refusal politely. Due to the frequency of this strategy across the interactions (i.e., reasons in excess), reasons in this Mexican society seem to be open to a polite interpretation to avoid making the interlocutor feel bad, as reflected in (9a). Most importantly, there seems to be a cultural understanding between the interlocutors that a fictitious excuse which functions as an indirect refusal seems to be the expected behavior in this Mexican community (9b). It should be noted that in this community reasons are preferred over a direct refusal or a blunt ‘no’ because these Mexican participants are concerned with their public image, in particular, a concern of ‘what others may think about them’ (el qué dirán) if they employ a direct refusal, as reported by one participant in (9b, line 4). Finally, the Mexican informant in (9c) reported that he did not express his true feelings to the interlocutor in order to avoid offending him and to protect both his own and the interlocutor’s face (9c, lines 5–7); in this context, we can see that reasons are strategically selected to express involvement and cooperation with the interlocutor (line 7).


5.2.3 Perception of refusals in a solidarity face system (–P, –D) Both the Mexicans and the Americans reported that it was difficult to refuse an interlocutor of equal status (–D) such as a friend because of the close relationship between them, but each group differed in the degree of uncertainty expressed in the refusal. The examples below display the thoughts reported by some Americans while refusing a friend’s invitation (10) or suggestion (11): (10) Birthday – Declining a friend’s invitation (American) You gotta say ‘no’, but you gotta give a reason, and politely say ‘no,’ by providing alternatives; try to compromise, try to make some kind of specific plans. (American #14) (11) Bar – Refusing friend’s suggestion to skip class (American) Thinking of my three unexcused absences, I do save them up for times when I just need a break, so I didn’t need a break at this time and stuff, but it was not a priority. (American #16)

As shown in the examples above, the American in (10) reported that it was important to convey a refusal directly with a friend, to express a straightforward reason, and to compromise by suggesting alternatives. Also, as noted in (11), some of the reasons provided by the Americans reflected a policy adopted in some US American universities which allows students three unexcused absences during a semester. Conversely, the Mexicans commented that it was difficult to refuse a close friend and resorted to a series of (false) excuses in order to express affiliation with the interlocutor. The following examples reflect the thought processes of four Mexicans while refusing a friend’s invitation (12) or suggestion (13): (12) Birthday – Declining a friend’s invitation (Mexicans) a. No decirle tajantemente ‘no’, con una razón aunque no sea cierta – inventarle mil cosas para que se diera cuenta de que no quería ir. (Mexican #6) ‘To not tell him directly ‘no’, with a reason, even if it isn’t true – make up a thousand things so that he would realize that I didn’t want to go.’ b. Siempre desarrollamos un consentimiento de camaradería, entre compa ñeros, ¿no?, siempre está eso presente, y generalmente cuando hacen una invitación de ese tipo, decir que ‘no,’ es casi darles un bofetada, ¿no? (Mexican #7). ‘We always develop a feeling of camaraderie among friends, right?, it’s always present, and generally when someone makes an invitation of this type, saying ‘no’ is almost like giving them a slap in the face, isn’t it?’


c. (…) muy pocas veces he dicho que ‘no’, nunca dije un ‘no’ directo, pero sí bastante directo en mi respuesta, en este caso porque se supone que ya hay confianza. (Mexican #16). ‘(…) very few times have I said ‘no’, I never said a flat out ‘no’, but yes, I was fairly direct in my answer, in this case because you suppose that there is already closeness or familiarity there.’ (13) Bar – Refusing a friend’s suggestion to skip class (Mexicans) Pensaba en cómo decirle que ‘no,’ pero darle una posibilidad que si me animaba, iba. (Mexican #17) ‘I thought about how to tell him ‘no,’ but to leave open the possibility that if I felt like it, I would go’

As illustrated in the comments above, most Mexicans avoided a direct refusal and resorted to a series of (invented) excuses to arrive at a mutual resolution with the interlocutor, as in (12a). Most importantly, some Mexican participants reported that due to the camaraderie or the confianza (‘closeness,’ ‘familiarity’) that exists between them, it makes it hard to say ‘no’ directly, as in (12b–c). Further, unlike the Americans who thought of a compromise and alternatives to end the interaction, most Mexicans said that they preferred to leave the situation open with the possibility of coming to the party or bar later, as in (13). Leaving the situation open or indefinite with the interlocutor seems to strengthen the links of confianza (‘closeness’, ‘familiarity’) between the Mexicans in this community. Although an indefinite response may give the impression of a misunderstanding, leaving the situation open in this Mexican community invokes an implicit understanding between the participants who know that an indefinite response gives the speaker the option to comply or not with the initiating act, without affecting the future relationship between the interlocutors. Overall, the verbal reports for the Mexican participants regarding their thought processes during the negotiation of a refusal shed light on two cultural values that are important in this Mexican community. On the one hand, the verbal report data suggest that these Mexican participants are conscious of the hierarchical differences in asymmetric relationships (+P). In this face system, the code of respeto (‘respect’) represents a sociocultural expectation and an instance of socially appropriate behavior. In this Mexican community, respeto was demonstrated by means of independence strategies including formal formulaic speech (e.g., profesor [‘professor’], jefe [‘boss’]), tentativeness in the justifications, and the use of the formal address form usted (you-FORMAL) which clearly marks the difference in social rank in this Mexican community. On the other hand, in symmetric situations with a close relationship (–P, –D) between interlocutors who are the same age, the norm in this Mexican community is to express solidarity by means


of reinforcing the code of confianza (‘closeness’, ‘familiarity’). As mentioned in Chapter 4, confianza includes values of closeness, intimacy, familiarity, and camaraderie. By employing this code, the interlocutors can freely utilize a direct style of communication because this is the expected social behavior in this community.

5.3

Perception of directness or indirectness

This section presents the results with respect to the perception of directness and indirectness among the Mexicans and the Americans when refusing a person in symmetric and asymmetric situations, and how these notions are conceptualized in Mexico and the United States. Immediately after the role-play session in which the refusal data were elicited, every participant was asked the following question while he listened to each tape-recorded interaction: “To what extent was it important for you to be direct or indirect when you refused in this situation?” The degree of directness or indirectness when performing a refusal was perceived differently by the Mexicans and the Americans. The participants’ responses with regard to their preference for a direct or an indirect refusal in each situation and in each group is shown in Table 11. As can be seen in Table 11, the majority of the Americans reported that they considered it important to be direct with a boss (+P, Farewell, Bookstore), with a person of equal status and distant relationship (+D, Notes), and with a friend or classmate (–D, Birthday, Bar), but slightly indirect with a university professor (+P, Advisor, 55% or 11 of 20 participants). In contrast, the Mexicans appeared to be very conscious of the differences in social power. For example, the majority of the individuals in the Mexican group commented that it was important to be indirect when refusing a person of higher status such as a boss (+P, Farewell, Bookstore) or a professor (+P, Advisor), direct when refusing a person of equal status (–D, Table 11. Perception of direct and indirect refusals by situation among the Americans and the Mexicans (20 participants per group) Situation

Americans Direct

Indirect

Mexicans Direct

Indirect

Farewell (+P, +D) Bookstore (+P, +D) Advisor (+P, +D) Notes (–P, +D) Birthday (–P, –D) Bar (–P, –D)

18 (90%) 17 (85%) 9 (45%) 18 (90%) 15 (75%) 18 (90%)

2 (10%) 3 (15%) 11 (55%) 2 (10%) 5 (15%) 2 (10%)

2 (10%) 3 (15%) 2 (10%) 10 (50%) 13 (65%) 15 (75%)

18 (90%) 17 (85%) 18 (90%) 10 (50%) 7 (35%) 5 (25%)


Birthday, Bar), and either direct (50% of the participants) or indirect (50% of the participants) with a person of equal status but distant relationship (+D, Notes). In general, these results reveal that the majority of the Americans in this study thought that it is important to express a direct or straightforward refusal in three face systems (hierarchical face, [+P, Farewell, Bookstore]; deference face [+D, Notes]; solidarity face [–D, Birthday, Bar]). Conversely, for the majority of the Mexican informants the degree of (in)directness appears to be influenced by the face system; that is, there is a tendency in this Mexican community to be indirect and respectful in a hierarchical face system and direct in a solidarity face system. The perception of directness or indirectness reflected different cultural values according to each situation and face system. It should be noted that the participants’ responses to the question: “To what extent was it important for you to be direct or indirect when you refused in this situation?” yielded varying degrees of directness (direct, somewhat direct, very direct) or indirectness (indirect, somewhat indirect, very indirect). In general, the Americans reported that when refusing they felt that it was important to be direct, to express their feelings with true explanations, to be honest, straightforward, and clear, but at the same time, polite. The examples in (14) show the Americans’ perceptions regarding the notions of directness and indirectness: (14) Perceptions of the notions of directness and indirectness (Americans) a. Important to be direct; if not direct, he [the boss]’s going to find a way to get you into it, he’s gonna find a way to work around it. (Bookstore [+P, +D], American #9) b. Direct with someone that you don’t know, it’s important to state your opinions, straight out ‘no, no I’m not gonna give you the stuff.’ (Notes [–P, +D], American #13) c. Important to be direct, otherwise he [the classmate]’ll keep insisting. (Notes [–P, +D], American #20) d. Direct with reasons, (it’s) important telling him [friend] why. (Birthday [–P, –D], American #19) e. Very direct – if he wants to skip class, it’s his problem. (Bar [–P, –D], American #1) f. Indirect at the beginning – cannot be direct right away (…) to be polite by asking questions, asking for explanations, (…) need to be sincere with a professor, but not giving a ‘no’ bluntly. (Advisor [+P, +D], American #12)

As shown in the examples above, a direct refusal does not necessarily have to be expressed with a blunt ‘no’ or ‘I can’t’, but rather, being direct means conveying a message with true intentions and straightforward explanations. In examining the


perceptions reported by most participants from this community, it is clear that directness reflects their cultural values: it is important to be direct with a boss to express the speaker’s true intentions and honest reasons (14a), direct with a person that we do not know well (same age) to convey distance and to avoid a possible insistence on the part of the interlocutor (14b–c), and direct with reasons when refusing a friend’s invitation in order to express involvement with (14d) and independence from the interlocutor (14e). While in most of these situations it was important to express a direct refusal at the beginning of the interaction, some participants commented that when refusing a professor’s advice to take a class it was important to be polite or indirect (i.e., asking questions, offering reasons) at the beginning of the interaction (14f); however, towards the end of the interaction, it was crucial for the Americans to convey a clear message. On the contrary, the individuals in the Mexican group considered the notions of directness and indirectness to be important values when refusing a person of equal or higher status. Of the two, indirectness predominated across the situations and was viewed as the default style of communication to express relational work and politeness so as to soften the negative effects of a direct refusal, as shown in the following comments in (15): (15) Perceptions of the notions of directness and indirectness (Mexicans)

a. Indirecto, darle la vuelta a la situación, una situación de profesor- estudi-

ante, decirle por qué no (…) indirecto por la posición – más que nada si el tutor está para orientarte, qué mejor que oiga el por qué (…) (Advisor [+P, +D], Mexican #11) ‘Indirect, turn the situation around, a professor-student situation, tell him why not (….) indirectly because of his position – more than anything if your advisor is there to give you guidance, it’s better that he knows why (…)’ b. 1 Difícilmente le diría ‘no puedo’, prefiero las justificaciones (…), 2 cuando decimos un ‘no’ suena agudo, y entonces, pues, 3 a mí no me gusta que me lo digan así de tajo, lo más lógico 4 sería suavizar el trancazo. (Bookstore [+P, +D], Mexican #8) ‘With difficulty would I tell him ‘I can’t’, I prefer the reasons (…), when we say a ‘no’, it sounds sharp, and then, well I don’t like people to say it to me so directly, the most logical thing would be to soften the blow.’ c. Sería bastante importante ser indirecto, porque en cierto modo en esas situaciones uno se siente muy apenado por las circunstancias en las que se encuentra, especialmente porque estoy bastante agradecido con él, yo nunca diría un ‘no’ directo, más que nada por pena y por compromiso, diría yo. (Farewell [+P, +D], Mexican #16)


d. e. f.

‘It would be rather important to be indirect, because in a way in those situations you feel really bad because of the circumstances you find yourself in, especially because I am very grateful to him, I would never say a direct ‘no’, more than anything because of feeling bad and for the commitment I feel towards him, I would say.’ Un poco indirecto…siendo indirecto, pues que tal vez no soy tan grosero, hay personas que uno se encuentra que son muy directas y pues muy groseras, y yo no, bueno, yo trato de ser no grosero, aunque no me caiga y siendo indirecto (…) prefiero dar excusas; terminé prestándolos (los apuntes) pero con algo de disgusto, pero para que ya me estuviera hablando más (Notes [–P, +D], Mexican #17) ‘A little bit indirect…being indirect, well maybe I’m not that rude, there are people that you meet that are very direct and well very rude and I’m not, well I try not to be rude, even though I don’t get along well with him and being direct (…) I prefer to give excuses; I ended up lending them (the notes) to him but somewhat annoyed, but so that he would keep on talking to me.’ Directo por la relación estrecha con mi amigo. (Birthday [–P, –D], Mexican #14) ‘Direct because of the close relationship with my friend.’ Directo, darle un argumento, directo con razones. (Bar [–P, –D], Mexican #9) ‘Direct, present my argument, direct with reasons.’

As shown in the examples above, in a hierarchical face system (+P), among the Mexicans in this study the characteristics of the notion of indirectness include respeto (‘respect’) to a person of higher status (15a), the need to provide reasons or explanations (15b), and avoidance of a direct ‘no’ because of the support received previously from that person (yo nunca diría un ‘no’ directo por pena y por compromiso ‘I would never tell him ‘no’ directly out of respect and because of the debt owed to the other person’) (15c). Similarly, in a deference face system (+D), the values of the notion of indirectness consist of not being rude (or being polite) and refusing profusely by means of detailed and specific reasons (15d). As mentioned by this participant (15d), instead of refusing to lend the notes to his classmate, as instructed in the role-play description, he ended up lending his notes so as to keep open the channels of communication and to avoid a direct refusal. Finally, in a solidarity face system (–D), the characteristics of the notion of directness include confianza (‘familiarity’ or ‘intimacy’) so as to express closeness with a friend (15e) and, once again, through a chain of specific reasons to justify the refusal (15f). Overall, the cross-cultural perceptions of the notions of directness and indirectness among the Mexicans and the Americans seem to complement the find-


ings from the role-play data regarding the frequency and content of reasons or accounts to express relational work and politeness. Although both groups chose a reason or an explanation as the most frequently employed strategy, accounting for 25% of the data in each group, the frequency was slightly more pronounced in the Mexican data (n = 327) than among the Americans (n = 290) when refusing a person of equal or higher status. However, cross-cultural differences were observed in the pragmatic tone of reasons or explanations in each group. Among the individuals in the Mexican group, the reasons appeared to be more formal to express respect and solidarity when addressing a person of higher (e.g., [+P] boss, professor) and equal (e.g., [–D] friend) status, respectively. In these situations, among the Mexicans a reason was used to convey politeness in order to suavizar el trancazo (‘soften the blow’), as mentioned in example (15b, line 4). On the other hand, among the Americans reasons or explanations were often provided to express appropriate, not polite behavior. For the most part, among these Americans, the purpose of a reason was mainly to benefit the speaker; that is, to validate his rights and to respect his wants.

5.4

Perception regarding an insistence in the act of declining an invitation

This section examines the perception of insistence after declining an invitation from a person of equal or higher status among the Mexicans and the Americans. During the retrospective verbal report, participants in each group were asked the following questions while they listened to the Farewell (+P) and Birthday (–P) situations: “After declining the invitation from a boss or a friend, did you expect an insistence from him?” “Do you consider an insistence rude or acceptable in your culture?” An insistence following a refusal to an invitation was perceived differently by the Mexicans and the Americans. The examples in (16) illustrate the Americans’ perception of insistence when declining an invitation from a friend or a boss: (16) Perception of insistence when declining an invitation (Americans) a. I don’t even know what else I could’ve said, the fact that he was insisting was odd, because of the reasons I gave. (Birthday, –D, American #16) b. I did not expect the insistence – I felt I was being pressured, he made it awkward; he made it difficult. (Farewell, +P, American #16) c. With the insistence the situation got more difficult, it was not expected, but I wouldn’t have changed my mind either way (…) I did not expect he was going to ask me again, I would expect that my decision would be


d.

respected by him, but I don’t want to feel obligated. (Farewell, +P, American #16) In a real situation in the past, after my boss invited me to his Christmas party, I said “no, I’m not going,” and the boss said “all right, ok, I understand.” If he had insisted, I would’ve started to get rude. (Farewell, +P, American #4)

As these quotes show, among the Americans, an insistence after declining an invitation was perceived as unexpected and inappropriate behavior. The majority of the Americans reported that while one insistence may be expected when declining an invitation from a close friend (–D), the interlocutor does not usually keep insisting; instead, the outcome of the interaction tends to close with a compromise (i.e., giving options) on the part of the person refusing. For instance, after refusing an invitation from a friend, one participant felt that the insistence was out of line and did not know how to continue the sequence, as reported in (16a). Similarly, an insistence from the boss in the Farewell situation triggered the following feelings among the Americans: it represents an imposition by creating tension with the interlocutor and makes the situation uncomfortable (16b), and it affects the outcome of the interaction and threatens the speaker’s independence face (i.e., speaker’s wants) (16c). In fact, one participant commented that in a similar situation in the past, his boss did not insist, and respected the speaker’s wants (16d). Among the individuals in the Mexican group, however, an insistence following a refusal to an invitation from a friend or a boss was perceived differently. The examples in (17) describe the Mexican’s thoughts regarding the notion of insistence after declining an invitation: (17) Perception of insistence when declining an invitation (Mexicans) a. Esperaba que me insistiera, pero no, no me molestó, cuando me insistió me sentí que estaba halagado porque sentí que para él [el jefe] sí era importante que fuera yo, y a la vez pues sí sentí algo feo, decirle que no (…) con una segunda insistencia, le hubiera dicho ‘no, pues tratare.’ (Farewell, +P, Mexican #10) ‘I expected him to insist with me, but no, it didn’t bother me, when he insisted with me I felt flattered because I felt that for him [the boss] it was indeed important that I go and at the same time I felt rather bad, telling him no (…) with a second insistence I would have said, ‘no, well I’ll try.’ b. No me molestó, está bien, de hecho cuando así me sucede y me insisten, yo trato de hacer lo imposible, aunque sea estoy un ratito en la fiesta, y la dejé abierta. (Farewell, +P, Mexican #19)


c.

‘It didn’t bother me, it’s fine, in fact when this happens to me and people insist with me, I try to do the impossible, even to be there for a little while at the party and I left it open.’ No molestó la insistencia, es algo cotidiano – sí esperaba la insistencia, viniendo de mi cuate, la siento un tanto cortés, porque es de no dejar ahí nada más, se ve que él tiene interés que también yo esté allá, a lo mejor él también sabe que le voy a decir que ‘no’ pero pues insiste ¿no? – se insiste para que a lo mejor la relación siga manteniéndose porque la insistencia en esta situación es lo apropiado. (Birthday, –D, Mexican #9) ‘The insistence didn’t bother [me], it’s something common– yes, I expected the insistence coming from my buddy, to me it seems somewhat polite because it’s about not leaving things just like that, it shows that he is interested in my being there too, maybe he also knows that I’m going to say ‘no’, but he insists, right? – people insist maybe in order to maintain the relationship because the insistence in this situation is the appropriate thing.’

As shown in the examples above, among these Mexicans an insistence (direct or indirect) does not represent a face-threatening act; instead, it is seen as a cultural expectation, and even serves to enhance the relationship between the interlocutors. Most importantly, among these participants an insistence to an invitation reflects the following cultural values: it is taken as a compliment and makes the invitee feel good or important (17a). Unlike the Americans who often offered a compromise to end the interaction, among the Mexicans it was common to make an effort to attend a social event and/or leave the outcome of the interaction open, as reported in (17b). Further, one participant said (17c), as did most Mexicans, that in this community an insistence represents the appropriate behavior, namely, it expresses relational work because it keeps the relationship going. Thus, since an insistence is part of the everyday social interaction in this society, it is perceived as socially appropriate behavior which may be open to a polite interpretation, as revealed in the comment in (17c). Once again, with regard to an insistence after an invitation was issued, the verbal report data complement the role-play results presented in Chapter 4. Greater attempts at indirectness were observed in the Mexican data due to the many insistences present across the interaction (Farewell: 57.6%; Birthday: 75.3%), whereas the Americans showed a lower preference for indirectness as a result of fewer insistences (Farewell: 51.1%; Birthday: 61.8%) (Figure 7). Most importantly, while an insistence among the Mexicans expresses involvement and confianza (i.e., closeness, familiarity, openness) with the interlocutor and with members of the social group, among the Americans an insistence is often seen as an intrusion or


imposition on the speaker’s independence face, and may be perceived as an act of impolite or unexpected social behavior or rudeness.

5.5

Concluding remarks

The findings obtained in this chapter show that the retrospective verbal reports, a technique used in second language pragmatics and in psychology research (Cohen 1998; 2004; Ericsson & Simon 1993), allowed the examination of the Mexicans’ and Americans’ thought processes when refusing a person in symmetric and asymmetric situations. In particular, this technique permitted an analysis of the perception of directness and indirectness, the perceived notion of social distance and social power, and the perception of insistence after declining an invitation in each culture. It was found that the Mexican participants recognized the differences in social distance and social power when refusing a person in hierarchical (+P) and solidarity (–D) face systems. In the former, the Mexicans showed a preference for indirectness, while in the latter there was an inclination towards directness. On the contrary, among the Americans there was a strong preference for directness in both face systems and with a person of equal (–D) and higher (+P) status. The notions of directness and indirectness conveyed various cultural values. The individuals in the Mexican group associated indirectness with values of respeto (‘respect’), formality, tentativeness, and a concern for helping the interlocutor, whereas directness was often employed with interlocutors of equal status with whom the speaker can convey confianza, that is, values of informality, openness, camaraderie, and closeness. The American informants, nevertheless, associated the notion of directness with clarity, fairness, honesty, and straightforward responses that conveyed the speaker’s true feelings, as well as respect for the speaker’s own wants. With regard to the notion of insistence after declining an invitation, it was found that each group expressed relational work with different expectations. Among the Mexicans, an insistence was perceived as a cultural expectation and socially appropriate behavior on the part of the person inviting. That is, the Mexican participants reported that in these situations an insistence (direct or indirect) did not bother them; in fact, it was expected as a means of expressing affiliation and enhancing the links of confianza (closeness, familiarity), not only with the interlocutor, but also with the broader social group. In contrast, among the Americans, an insistence after an invitation is not the expected behavior and represents an imposition and a violation of the invitee’s independence face. Among the Mexicans an insistence created an implicit agreement to possibly accept the invitation


in the future and generated a preference for indefinite responses, whereas for the Americans the expected behavior for expressing relational work and for ending the interaction appropriately was a compromise on the part of the invitee. Overall, a careful analysis of the participants’ verbal reports has provided insight into the social perceptions regarding refusals (metapragmatic politeness1) in the Mexican and U.S. communities examined here with regard to: socially appropriate behavior, polite behavior, and an understanding of cultural values such as directness and indirectness, social power and social distance, face wants, respect, deference, and the perception regarding an insistence in each sociocultural context. In the next chapter the conclusions and a discussion of the results obtained in the current investigation will be presented.

chapter 6

Conclusions and discussion

6.1

Introductory remarks

This book set out to investigate the similarities and differences in the realization patterns and perceptions of refusals by educated, male native speakers of Mexican Spanish (in Mexico) and American English (in the United States) in formal and informal situations. The production (role-play situations) and perception (verbal report) data were analyzed according to the framework of relational work (Locher & Watts 2005; Watts 2005). As stated in Chapter 2 (Section 1.5.12), my understanding of the term ‘relational work’ refers to the work interlocutors engage in during the course of dynamic social interaction (face-to-face interactions) when negotiating and renegotiating their intentions with active interlocutors in specific situations according to the cultural values of a given society. And, as we have seen, the negotiation of face is both relational and interactional (Arundale 2006). The production data analyzed here included two types of linguistic strategies: i) the pragmatic strategies that comprise the speech-act set of refusals were analyzed as direct and indirect refusals and adjuncts to refusals (positive supportive facework) (Section 3.6.1) and ii) internal modification of a refusal, that is, expressions of epistemic modality that weaken or mitigate a refusal response (Section 3.6.2). To examine cross-cultural differences in formal and informal situations, the six situations were analyzed according to three face systems: hierarchical (+P), deference (+D), and solidarity (–D), based on the work of Scollon & Scollon (2001). As was shown in the current study, while linguistic expressions are often employed to carry out relational work when negotiating a refusal, if these are used in excess in socially appropriate contexts, these expressions may be open to a polite interpretation. In particular, an analysis of the data allowed an examination of how Mexicans and Americans express linguistic politeness in symmetric and asymmetric relationships and how they perceive folk notions of politeness, that is, politeness1, as it is realized in every day social interaction in these societies.


By applying a discourse approach to speech act theory (Chapter 2), the speech-act set of refusals in the current study was analyzed by examining refusal sequences across the interaction. Although refusal sequences were realized across multiple turns, the construction of sequences and the outcome of the interaction varied for each group. For instance, among the Mexicans the sequential realization of a refusal was mostly constructed by means of a series of insistences and vague responses (indefinite replies) across the interaction, whereas among the Americans, the outcome of a refusal was often constructed by means of a compromise-response sequence (alternatives). Further, among the Americans the resolution of a refusal was clearly communicated with a straightforward refusal and alternatives to compromise, whereas for the Mexicans the message of a refusal required various attempts at indirectness, through the frequent use of indefinite replies and mitigated refusals. The negotiation of face during a refusal interaction among the Mexicans and the Americans shows that pragmatic variation within each group and between the groups appears to be the norm in speech-act production and perception. For instance, individual participants expressed varying degrees of directness and indirectness and the perceptions of politeness varied not only between groups, but for each individual. In addition to analyzing the overall results, the current study made an effort to explore the individual variability observed in each situation and in each face system. The results showed that the pragmatic system of native speakers who belong to the same community of practice is not uniform (Chapter 4.3). Instead, as observed by Eelen (2001), variability in social interaction is systematic and ‘is part of the system of politeness, and that system itself remains shared between the members of a group.” (p. 147). In addition to the individual analysis of speech act production and perception, a cross-linguistic analysis was conducted utilizing a statistical method which takes into account the variability of each score for each participant in the entire sample (analysis of variance). The use of statistical methods in cross-linguistic research provides insights into the systematic patterns of speech act production between the groups in comparable situations.

6.2

The negotiation of a refusal and face systems

To analyze the cross-cultural realization patterns of refusals in formal and informal situations, the data for six comparable situations were examined according to three face systems (Scollon & Scollon 2001) (Chapter 4.4). In a hierarchical face system, both the Mexicans and the Americans recognized the power difference (+P) between the interlocutors, but each group responded in its own way to those differences. On the one hand, the individuals in the Mexican group showed higher

Chapter 6. Conclusions and discussion 161

levels of indirectness, tentativeness, formality, and respect when refusing a person of higher status through the use of detailed justifications, indefinite replies, and mitigated refusals. On the other, the Americans expressed their true feelings by means of straightforward reasons/explanations, direct refusals, and alternatives when interacting with a boss (Farewell, Bookstore). In general, the frequent use of tentative and mitigated refusals in the Mexican data may be a form of expressing politeness in specific situations, in particular because a person of higher status (a boss, a professor) deserves respect and social recognition (deferential politeness) among the members of this community. In a deference face system, the content of reasons differed for each group when refusing a person of equal status but distant relationship (+D), reflecting different cultural values. For example, among the Mexicans in the Notes situation most reasons or justifications for the refusal were expressed by means of ficticious reasons or white lies (Leech 1983) such as referring a classmate to a third party to get the notes, the speaker saying that he did not have the notes with him at that time, or that the notes were illegible. In contrast, the Americans employed reasons which expressed their true feelings and emotions (e.g., I don’t feel comfortable lending my notes; I work hard), referred to ethical issues of fairness (e.g., it’s not fair to lend the class notes), or said that the speaker needed the notes to study. As can be seen from these examples, among the individuals in the American group the concept of fairness represents an important value in U.S. culture. Thus, the content of reasons or explanations in these refusals directly reflects the values of the two cultures: on the one hand, an inclination towards involvement or affiliation with an interlocutor who shows concern for the other and expresses cooperation and solidarity with the interlocutor (Mexicans); on the other, a tendency towards independence or autonomy to reflect values of fairness and individuality, and a focus on the self as an independent member of a society (Americans). In a solidarity face system (–D), for example, declining a friends’ invitation to a birthday party, the structure of a refusal sequence displayed the following characteristics in both groups: the refusal was often delayed across turns, there were constant overlaps, most turns were brief, and the refusal was often accomplished by means of multiple turn-units across the sequence. Further, in a situation of equal status (–P) where the participants know each other (–D), a refusal is most likely to be expressed through reasons or explanations (Americans) or direct refusals (Mexicans) to convey relational work and the resolution of the refusal is interactionally achieved. Most importantly, among the Mexicans in the current study the use of direct refusals with a close friend (–D) represents involvement or closeness with the interlocutor; that is, a direct refusal does not seem to impose on the interlocutor’s independence face. Nevertheless, in this group a direct refusal was often mitigated by in-group identity markers, diminutives, and the use


of given names between equal-status friends. Although this finding is not consistent with Brown and Levinson’s (1987) observation that an on-record strategy may threaten the hearer’s negative face, the results of the present study are in line with other studies of different cultures which have concluded that directness realized in various speech acts does not express impolite behavior, but rather, a direct act (in situations of equal status) may be seen as a way of expressing closeness or affiliation with an interlocutor (Márquez Reiter 2000; Pavlidou 2000; Wierzbicka 2003, 2006). Overall, the pragmatic tone observed in the content of reasons or explanations among the Mexicans (explanations often related to friends and family matters, expressing support and concern for the interlocutor) is open to a polite interpretation in this Mexican community because reasons express cooperation and solidarity with the interlocutor. On the contrary, the reasons provided by the Americans (straightforward responses, brief reasons; references to ethical values) may not be interpreted as polite behavior; but rather, the reasons are seen as manifestations of relational work during the negotiation of a refusal; they support the speaker’s independence aspect of face.

6.2.1 Forms of address and linguistic politeness In the face systems examined here, the Mexican and the American informants differed in their preference for the use of address forms to express relational work and linguistic politeness. While the English language has one pronominal form for expressing formality or informality (‘you’), the Mexican pronominal system has two forms of address: tú (‘you-SINGULAR-INFORMAL’) and usted (‘you-SINGULAR-FORMAL’). These forms were previously examined in a different variety of Mexican Spanish (from Veracruz) as the code of respeto (‘respect’) (usted ‘youFORMAL’) and the code of confianza (‘closeness’, ‘familiarity’) (tú ‘you-INFORMAL’) (Covarrubias 2002), but the focus in Covarrubias’ study was not on face or politeness phenomena in Mexican society. These notions are instrumental in the current study to examine enactments of solidarity, power, respect, and politeness. As shown in Chapter 4, in a hierarchical face system the Mexican participants consistently employed usted (‘you-FORMAL’) as the code of respeto when addressing a person of higher status; that is, the Mexicans acknowledged the hierarchical difference when addressing a person of higher status (e.g., a professor or a boss). As noted in the Mexican data, respeto is expressed by the use of usted (‘youFORMAL’) and other formal forms (profesor ‘professor’, jefe ‘boss’, señor ‘sir’).The components of the code of confianza observed in the Mexican community under investigation include familiarity, solidarity, openness, confidentiality, and trust.


The enactments of this code comprise the second person singular tú (‘you-INFORMAL’) and various formulaic linguistic expressions (e.g., in-group identity markers, given names, nicknames) frequently utilized in colloquial speech among male university students in Tlaxcala, Mexico. In the Mexican community examined here, in a hierarchical face system the choice of formal forms and formulaic expressions is seen as an expression of socially appropriate behavior. It has been observed that in several languages formal forms and honorifics can function as devices for expressing linguistic politeness because they index the speaker’s identity and attributes, and the formality of the situation (Ide 2005). Although it is argued that these forms of address constitute polite behavior, the performance and perception data analyzed herein showed that the Mexican informants employed deferential forms in order to convey respect and to acknowledge the social position of the person in a higher status such as a boss or a professor, not necessarily to be polite but because it is expected. As such, these forms represent socially appropriate behavior, and under the appropriate circumstances, they may be interpreted as polite behavior. Overall, the perception of respect and politeness in this Mexican community can be summarized by the comment provided by one Mexican participant in the Bookstore stituation in which he was directed to refuse the boss’ request (Chapter 5, example 5a): a personas de nivel más alto que yo, pues no les puedo decir que ‘no,’ así directo, es, como si dijéramos, una falta de respeto hacia la persona – me voy por las ramas (‘to people who are at a higher level than I am, I can’t tell them ‘no’ directly, it’s, as if we would say, a lack of respect toward the person – I beat around the bush’).

6.3

Insistence as a discourse strategy

With regard to an insistence following a refusal to an invitation, cross-cultural differences were observed between the Americans and the Mexicans. Among the Americans, after the negotiation of one or two insistences, a compromise was reached by means of offering alternatives to the interlocutor. Among the Mexicans, however, compromise sequences to end a refusal sequence were rare; instead, it was considered appropriate for the person making the invitation (a boss or a friend) to insist several times and for the person refusing to continue to refuse across the interaction. In this Mexican community, an insistence is viewed as a discourse strategy that occurs across the interaction and represents the expected social behavior. Similarly, due to their frequent presence across the interactions in the Farewell and Birthday situations, it appears that an insistence may be inter-


preted as polite behavior in addition to reinforcing the bonds of solidarity among the interlocutors. In general, the results of the role-play and verbal report data suggest that in Mexican society an insistence (direct or indirect) to an invitation between an equal-status friend and an unequal-status interlocutor does not constitute a facethreatening act, as claimed by Brown and Levinson (1987). Instead, among these participants an insistence is considered an instance of involvement and represents the expected cultural behavior that allows the interlocutor to negotiate his/her face needs across the interaction. Alternatively, not to insist is to fall out of line during social interaction and may be interpreted as impolite behavior. In fact, by expressing an insistence, a speaker reinforces the relationship between the interlocutors and allows the other party to be actively involved in the conversation. Thus, an insistence functions as a means of constructing discourse in social interaction.

6.4

The discourse function of epistemic expressions: Internal modification of a refusal

The current study also examined the epistemic meaning of four expressions that were frequently employed to express relational work and linguistic politeness in order to weaken or mitigate the negative effects of a direct refusal: mental state predicates (e.g., ‘I think’), modal adverbs (e.g., ‘probably’), degree modifiers (e.g., ‘sort of ’), and tag questions (e.g., ‘I don’t have to take this class, do I?’). As shown in Chapter 4 (Table 10), the Americans displayed a strong preference for modal adverbs (e.g., ‘probably,’ ‘unfortunately’) across the situations and mental state predicates (‘I think’) to present a refusal response more tentatively when refusing a professor’s advice to take a class. In contrast, the individuals in the Mexican group mostly employed mental state predicates (creo que no voy a poder asistir ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to attend’) and to a lesser extent modifiers (como que no voy a poder ‘It’s sort of like I’m not going to be able to’). Overall, the results of the current study suggest that these forms encode the values of tentativeness and subjectivity in order to present a refusal response with caution. And due to their frequent occurrence across the interaction (marked behavior in excess), it can be concluded that these forms are strategically employed to maintain the flow of conversation and, in situations where the topic is sensitive, they may express polite behavior. Brown and Levinson (1987) examined similar linguistic strategies as hedges which represent an important resource for the realization of politeness strategies during the negotiation of a face-threatening act. For example, they examined ‘I think’ as a quality hedge which is considered a strategy of negative politeness and


reported that by using quality hedges “the speaker is not taking full responsibility for the truth of his utterance” (p. 164). However, it should be noted that hedges cannot be exclusively considered markers of (negative) politeness and their context must be considered. In the current study for example, mental state predicates were strategically selected by both groups to carry out relational work. Based on their excessive use in refusal sequences, in this study mental state predicates served to mitigate a refusal response. Their presence in a refusal response may be open to a polite interpretation because they make the refusal tentative and less imposing. Finally, since these expressions frequently co-occurred with other mitigators in the same refusal sequence across the interaction, they were analyzed as a discourse strategy. As an interactional resource, these expressions serve to enhance the interpersonal relationships between the participants. That is, by providing information tentatively and with varying degrees of certainty or uncertainty rather than directly, the interlocutor reacts with information that is appropriate to the refusal response and which promotes interaction. For example, it was common to end a refusal response with mental state predicates (I already have plans, I think) or with a tag question (bueno, pero, no tendría que ser necesariamente o forzoso y ahorita en este semestre, ¿o sí? [‘well, but it woudn’t have to be necessarily or obligatorily right now this semester, or would it?’]). In these examples, the expressions of ‘I think’ or ¿o sí? (‘or would it?’) in turn-final position functioned as a discourse strategy because they offered the floor to the interlocutor to further negotiate the refusal so that both interlocutors could arrive at a mutual agreement. In fact, the presence of these mitigators in a refusal response often elicited an uptake on the part of the interlocutor.

6.5

Perceptions of politeness

The folk notions of politeness (metapragmatic politeness1) expressed by the groups in the retrospective verbal reports complemented the findings obtained from the role-play production data. In the current study, these reports were utilized to examine the perceptions of politeness of each group with respect to directness, indirectness, and insistence during the negotiation of a refusal in symmetric (–P) and asymmetric (+P) relationships (Chapter 5). Gathering perception data on comparable situations gives us better insights and permits us to examine the cross-cultural differences regarding various aspects of politeness. For instance, the perception data for each group provided us with insights regarding the notions of social power and social distance in each society, as well as an understanding of the ethical values of both cultures, for example, the issue of ‘white lies’ that serve to reinforce the interpersonal relationships between the participants in the


Mexican culture (i.e., involvement) and the notion of ‘fairness’ which serves to reinforce the values of independence of the American participants. Similarly, the notions of directness and indirectness and the perception of insistence reflected different cultural values between the groups. During the negotiation of a refusal, the Mexican informants associated indirectness with values of respeto (‘respect’), formality, tentativeness, and a concern to help the interlocutor, whereas directness was often employed with members of the same status with whom the speaker could express confianza, that is values of openness, informality, camaraderie, and closeness. On the other hand, the Americans linked the notion of directness in most situations to clarity, fairness, honesty, straightforward responses that conveyed the speaker’s true feelings, and a concern for respecting the speaker’s wants, rather than those of the interlocutor. In addition, the retrospective verbal reports provided additional insight into the cross-cultural differences between the groups with respect to an insistence following a refusal to an invitation. Among the Mexicans an insistence was perceived as a cultural expectation and an expression of politeness for some participants, while most Americans commented that an insistence in their community was not expected because it interferes with the interlocutor’s personal wants. In general, the perception data validated the results obtained from the role-play data and provided additional insights into the values of each culture and into the notion of politeness1 as perceived in everyday interaction in Mexico and the United States.

6.6

The notion of ‘face’ in Mexico

The results obtained from the current study add to our understanding of the notion of ‘face’ and politeness in Mexican society. Two previous small-scale studies made an effort to examine politeness phenomena in Mexico City (Curcó 1998; Curcó & De Fina 2002), however, the current study examined the realization patterns of Mexicans in symmetric and asymmetric relationships in a different Mexican community (Tlaxcala, Mexico) utilizing performance and perception data. Using a multiple-choice questionnaire in which students were asked to rate the levels of politeness or impoliteness of various situations, Curcó (1998) and Curcó and De Fina (2002) investigated the perception of requests between Mexicans and Spaniards. Unlike Spaniards, it was found that Mexicans rated unmitigated requests as less polite and interrogative requests prefaced by negation and accompanied by a diminutive marker as more polite (e.g., oye, no por favorcito mueves tu coche [‘excuse me, won’t you please-DIMINUTIVE move your car?’]). However, with regard to the perception of social distance and social power, no conclusive findings were reported: a higher perception of social distance was significantly


higher in 1 of the 12 situations in the study, and in 2 of the 12 situations the perception of social power was statistically higher among Mexican speakers. Unlike these studies, the findings of the current investigation suggest that the individuals in the Mexican group examined in this Mexican community recognized the differences of social distance and social power with an interlocutor of equal or unequal status in all situations. It may be possible that regional variation between Mexico City and Tlaxcala, the nation’s capital versus a semi-urban city, influenced the preference for levels of social distance and social power. In addition, since the majority of the speakers from Tlaxcala were members of the lower-middle class, it may be possible that the distinctions regarding social differences are more pronounced, resulting in more frequent expressions of respect and deference. In a metropolitan area such as Mexico City interpersonal relations with an interlocutor of unequal status may be less deferential and show a greater preference for an egalitarian communication style. The notion of respect in the Mexican community examined implies perceived social status, as members of this community were aware of social differences and strategically employed the usted (‘you-FORMAL’) or the tú (‘you-INFORMAL’) forms of address to mark different levels of respect during social transactions. It is important to note that expressing respeto (‘respect’) in Mexican society does not mean that the speaker is protecting the hearer’s individual territory or selfimage, as commonly noted among the Americans, but rather, showing respeto in accordance with the social rules established by the society, in which components of honor and dignity are incorporated into a culture-specific transactional norm (Ting-Toomey and Cocroft 1994). In general, both aspects of face, independence and involvement, are present in the Mexican and American groups and were reflected in the interactional and perception data. Among the Mexicans, involvement seems to predominate, as most participants in this group expressed the need to show affiliation or support with the interlocutor. The aspect of independence among the Mexican participants was mainly manifested with interlocutors of higher status (+P) through the use of conveying respeto (‘respect’). Among this group refusal responses were frequently realized with a high degree of tentativeness, vagueness, and repetition so as to validate the speaker’s inability to comply with the request, suggestion or invitation of the interlocutor. This was evidenced by the high frequency of mitigated responses and internal mitigators observed in the role-play Mexican data. This behavior contrasted with the tendency of the Americans to highlight the independence aspect of face by means of expressing their true feelings, wants, and the need to be respected as an individual.


6.7

Refusals across languages

In this section, I will compare the results of the current study to the refusal behavior of native and non-native speakers across languages found in previous related literature. Overall, American English has been the main language of comparison for studies on native and non-native refusals, followed by Japanese as a first and a second language. Similar to the results of the empirical studies outlined in Table 1 (Chapter 2, Section 2.5.1), among the individuals in the Mexican and American groups in this study a reason or explanation represents the default strategy for refusing, as it is the most frequent pragmatic strategy employed when refusing in formal and informal situations. Despite the fact that reasons/explanations represent the preferred strategy for refusing across cultures, differences have been reported with regard to the frequency and content of this strategy, namely, reasons are less frequent, brief, and less specific among Americans while a greater number of detailed reasons occur in other languages such as Mandarin Chinese (Chen et al. 1995; Liao & Bresnahan 1996) and different varieties of Spanish (Mexican [Chapter 4 this book], Peruvian and Venezuelan Spanish [García 1992, 1999]). Refusals also differ cross-culturally with regard to the degree of directness and indirectness (e.g., ‘I can’t’ vs. ‘I have to study for an exam, how about tomorrow?’), deference or solidarity politeness (García 1999), and tentativeness by which a refusal response is expressed through a wide range of internal mitigators (mental state predicates, tag questions, degree modifiers, modal adverbs). Likewise, refusals can also be realized through non-linguistic means in natural conversation such as the use of silence (but also gesture and laughter) to express a polite refusal, as shown in Italian, Zapotec (Oaxaca, Mexico), and Japanese refusals to offers and requests (Frescura 1997; Schrader-Kniffki 2007; Ueda 1974). Native and non-native refusals also vary with respect to the degree of negotiation of a dispreferred response (fewer or frequent attempts at negotiation), recycling of the refusal across the interaction, clarity or vagueness expressed in the refusal response, delay or abruptness of the refusal, and how the outcome of the refusal is achieved across multiple turns (Chapter 4 [this book]; Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1991; Gass & Houck 1999; Labov & Fanshel 1977). Refusal behavior in Asian languages has been the subject of several studies and has mostly been compared to that of American English. For example, Japanese refusal strategies have been shown to vary according to five characteristics: the social status of the interlocutor (equal vs. unequal), a preference for vague refusals, delaying the answer to avoid a direct refusal, indefinite replies, and often display fictitious – but appropriate and believable – reasons or ‘white lies’ as the preferred approach used in consideration for the hearer (Beebe et al. 1990; Kanemoto 1983; Kinjo 1987; Moriyama 1990; Tickle 1991; Ueda 1974). Similar


to the Japanese, Chinese speakers vary their refusals in lower- and higher-imposition requests. Also, in Chinese and Japanese people tend to apologize more frequently with higher status interlocutors and less often with lower-status interlocutors (Beebe et al. 1990; Liao & Bresnahan 1996). Nevertheless, differences in Chinese refusals were found in two varieties of the language: Chinese speakers in Taiwan show a tendency toward more indirect refusals and a higher degree of mitigation (e.g., tone of voice) to soften a refusal, whereas Chinese speakers in Singapore are more inclined towards direct refusals and use fewer strategies when refusing (Bresnahan et al. 1999). Further, using written production data Lyuh (1992) and Kwon (2004) observed that Koreans are more likely to show sensitivity to higher status differences, employ more strategies and a greater degree of mitigation to express a refusal more formally and tentatively. As a result, Koreans tend to be less direct than Americans who generally express their own inclinations when refusing. Taken together, the results of the current study show the following similarities between Mexican Spanish and the Asian languages: the Mexicans show sensitivity to a higher status person (e.g., a boss or a professor), the content of the reasons or explanations when refusing in these contexts is tentative, formal, and elaborate, and they display a preference for vague and fictitious reasons (‘white lies’) in order to reinforce the bonds of solidarity between the interlocutors and to avoid hurting the hearer’s feelings. Similarly, Arabic and American refusals reflect different communication styles. It has been reported that native speakers of Arabic show a preference for indirectness with acquaintances of equal status, with close friends of unequal status, and with acquaintances of unequal status (Al-Issa 1998; Hussein 1995). Among Arabs, a detailed reason or explanation (especially when refusing a person of lower status) represents the preferred strategy for refusing so as to soften the blow of a refusal (Nelson et al. 2002), and they also have the tendency to utlize ‘white lies’ so as not to hurt the hearer’s feelings as well as to show cooperation with the interlocutor (Stevens 1995). When compared to the pragmatic behavior of Arabs in the same studies, Americans are more likely to utilize honest reasons and provide fewer explanations when refusing than Arabs (Nelson et al. 2002; Stevens 1993). In the current study the behavior of Mexicans parallels that of the native speakers of Arabic with respect to a preference for indirectness in situations where the relationship between the interlocutors is unequal (+P) or equal but distant (+D) and both tend to utilize a reason or explanation as the default strategy for refusing, in addition to ‘white lies’ to express affiliation and support with the interlocutor. Furthermore, a distinct characteristic of the individuals in the Mexican group is a higher preference for and the use of a wider variety of


mitigators (internal modification) which serve to make the refusal response more tentative, formal, and respectful. The refusal behavior of native speakers of English has been shown to vary across varieties as well. The three main characteristics of American refusals reported in the studies outlined in Table 1 (Chapter 2, Section 2.5.1) include: 1) a clear and constructive refusal; 2) reasons do not necessarily have to be offered; and, 3) a workable compromise (Kanemoto 1993; Smith 1975). According to the results of the current study, among the Americans (mostly participants from Minneapolis, Minnesota), a reason or an explanation (often prefaced by partial agreements/positive opinion) is the preferred means of refusing in formal and informal situations. In British English, however, a refusal to a request is more likely to be expressed through an apology or an expression of regret followed by a reason or excuse (Kitao 1996). Further, based on the results of the current study (production and perception data), among male American college students refusals are more likely to be indirect (reasons/explanations, alternatives, requests for additional information), but with high levels of certainty and clarity in the content of their reasons or justifications. In addition, when perfoming a refusal with a person of equal or higher status among the Americans, reasons or explanations appear to reflect the speaker’s true and honest beliefs about the situation rather than offering a ‘white lie’ as a justification of a refusal. Likewise, the high levels of mitigation observed when refusing a professor’s advice to take a class in this study (University of Minnesota) are similar to those reported among native speakers in a different community of practice (Wenger 1998) (Indiana University [BardoviHarlig & Hartford 1991]).12 Not unlike the variation found among native speakers of English, the realization of refusals across varieties of Spanish shows similarities and differences. With regard to the act of declining an invitation, the behavior of the Mexicans examined in the present study shows similarities to that of the Peruvians and Venezuelans; namely, the Mexican participants show a strong preference for indirect refusals when declining an invitation from a person of equal status (Birthday: 75.3%) (Figure 7), which is largely expressed through reasons, mitigated refusals, and indefinite replies. Also, the Mexican data of this study are more in line with the Peruvian data (García 1992) with regard to a strong preference for deference

12. Among second language learners of English the realization patterns of refusals have mostly been analyzed in U.S. settings. Regardless of the proficiency level, it is well documented that high levels of grammatical competence are not always concomitant with high levels of pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig 1999), and thus, it appears that the linguistic resources for mitigating a refusal response according to the sociocultural expectations of the target culture need to be taught explicitly in the (foreign) language classroom.


politeness to express respect to the interlocutor, whereas the Venezuelan participants in García’s study (1999) feature solidarity politeness when closing a refusal to an invitation. In role-play situations similar to those of the present study, the refusal behavior of male native speakers of Dominican Spanish (Santiago) reflected a strong preference for direct refusals when declining an invitation from a friend and an overall inclination towards involvement (Félix-Brasdefer 2008), similar to that of the Venezuelan participants in García’s study. However, when refusing an invitation, interactions among Venezuelans appear to be longer and more elaborate than those of the Dominicans whose interactions were mainly brief and realized in fewer turns. Finally, the results from Peninsular Spanish (from the University of Salamanca) (VonCanon 2006) suggest that refusal responses among Spaniards tend to be more direct and less tentative and formal than those of the informants in the Mexican (Chapter 4 [this book]) and Peruvian (Garcia 1991) studies. Moreover, the Spaniards in VonCanon’s study used fewer and less elaborate apologies or expressions of regret when refusing requests than the individuals in the Mexican group in the present study and the Peruvians in García’s study (1992). In a different study that compared the refusal behavior of Spaniards from Northern Spain (University of Tarragona) and Germans (Hamburg) (Margalef-Boada 1993), the results from the written and oral data showed that both groups favored reason or explanation as the most frequent strategy for refusing a person of equal or higher status, followed by direct refusals. Nevertheless, the refusal behavior of the studies above must be interpreted in light of the instrument employed to collect the data, be it production questionnaires that generate written data but lack oral interaction, role plays that produce simulated oral and interactional data in a controlled way, or naturally occuring data in a wide variety of settings among interlocutors with many different characteristics. Further, the generalizations regarding refusal behavior should be understood in view of the groups compared in each study (e.g., Arabs vs. Americans or Chinese vs. Americans). Overall, what is clear from the studies outlined in Table 1 (Chapter 2, Section 2.5.1) is that the study of pragmatic variation in speech act realization across language varieties is still in its infancy. In order to gain a better understanding of realization patterns of refusals and polite or appropriate behavior across language varieties (i.e., intra-lingual pragmatic variation [Barron 2005]), future research should center on pragmatic variation across varieties of one language (e.g., across varieties of Spanish or English), in languages other than English and Japanese, in Spanish varieties of Central America, among males and females, using more sophisticated data collection techniques to examine prosodic (e.g., pitch, stress) and paralinguistic (e.g., facial and body gestures) information


regarding the speech event, and with natural data collected from different institutional settings and/or ordinary conversation.

6.8

Issues on research methodology and implications for future research

The production data, collected by means of simulated interactions (role plays), were triangulated through retrospective verbal reports to observe the similarities and differences between Mexican and American society in the realization patterns of refusals (face-to-face-interaction) and the perceptions of politeness during the negotiation of a refusal in a controlled way. The current investigation made an effort to control several variables including the use of six comparable situations for each group (two refusals to invitations, two to requests, and two to suggestions), a participant pool limited to male undergraduate students of two public universities (one in Minneapolis, Minnesota [United States] and one in Tlaxcala City, Tlaxcala [Mexico]), as well as the social power and the social distance between the interlocutors. With respect to the validity of the role-play situations, most participants in both groups commented that since these situations had occurred to them before, the role play made them re-live the situation, and consequently, they answered in a similar fashion as in the real situation. More specifically, during the role-play interactions, the situations activated a mental frame of previous presuppositions and shared cultural expectations. Although the results of the current investigation cannot be generalized to the realization patterns of refusals observed among all native speakers of Spanish and English, the findings obtained here provide us with insightful information regarding the negotiation of a refusal and the perceptions of politeness in Mexican Spanish and U.S. English. Future studies should make an effort to gather ethnographic refusal data in institutional settings, such as refusals in service encounters or in doctor-patient discourse in order to validate the findings here. In the current study, the perception data were gathered by means of retrospective verbal reports grounded in research in psychology (Ericsson & Simon 1993) and second language pragmatics (Cohen 1998, 2004). This technique was chosen to complement the data and to aid in the examination of similarities and differences between the Mexican and the American cultures and to analyze perceptions of politeness in each society. By administering the verbal reports just after the role-play session was finished, it was assumed that memory traces could be partially accessed either from short-term memory, or retrieved from long-term memory (retrieval cues) and verbalized. One of the main benefits for using this


technique is that we can improve our understanding of politeness; namely, we can investigate what participants think of the folk notions of politeness as it is realized in every day social interaction and how the notions of social distance and social power are perceived in these cultures. Other studies have collected perception data on politeness using a less rigorous methodology (Blum-Kulka 1992; Mills 2003; Murillo Medrano 2004) and one study employed a modified version of verbal reports to examine perceptions of conventional indirectness in Spain and England (Márquez Reiter et al. 2005) using post-performance interviews administered one week after the production task. Thus, if the goal is to examine perceptions of politeness, future studies may benefit from using retrospective verbal reports as complementary data to shed light on participants’ oral production and to improve our understanding of politeness in cross-cultural pragmatics research. In general, using production and perception data in comparable situations, the present study has made an effort to examine the similarities and differences in the realization patterns of refusals in two groups, Mexicans (in Mexico) and Americans (in the United States) in symmetric and asymmetric relationships. During the negotiation of a refusal, the speakers of each culture expressed different degrees of relational work and politeness to soften the negative effects of a refusal response. The perception data gathered through the verbal reports provided us with insightful information regarding the notions of social distance, social power, insistence, and both directness and indirectness in Mexico and the United States. Most importantly, the current study employed a discursive approach to politeness by means of an examination of refusal sequences in social interaction. It is hoped that the results of the current study contribute to our understanding of politeness, face, discourse, and social interaction.

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appendix

Appendix IA. Role plays (Americans)

Instructions You are asked to participate in 10 role-play situations. Try to respond as you would in a real situation. You will role play the situations with a native speaker of English from the University of Minessota. These situations are taking place in Minneapolis. If there is something in the situations that you don’t understand, ask me and I will explain it to you.

Formal situations: Unequal status 1. Apology (+P, +D) – (*Distractor) You arranged to meet Professor (name of Professor) at his office at 4:00 p.m. today to go over some questions regarding the class and the readings before your exam in his (name of class) class next week. This is the first class you have taken with him. The class meets twice a week and you’ve missed several classes already this semester. You have only interacted with your professor during the class, and this is the first time you have come to his office.You know that he usually leaves his office at 5:00 p.m. Unfortunately, you don’t have a cell phone to call and let him know that you’ll be late.You arrive half an hour late for the meeting. Apologize to your professor. 2. Suggestion (+P, +D) – Advisor (Critical item) You are a first semester senior at the University of Minnesota and since pre-registration is next week, you are planning your schedule for your final semester. You have already put together a tentative schedule, but you need to get your advisor’s approval. Although you took one course with this professor during your freshman year, you haven’t had any contact with him other than in advising sessions once a semester. You made an appointment with him to review your schedule and you go to his office for the meeting. In preparation for your meeting, your advisor has been reviewing your transcript and during the course of the conversation, he suggests that you take an additional course in Spanish, but you don’t want to. 3. Request (+P, +D) – Bookstore (Critical item) You have been working at a part-time job for extra spending money after school at the University bookstore since the beginning of the semester. The bookstore is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. You work from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. You get along fine with your boss, but you are not friends and you do not socialize together outside work. It is Friday evening at 6:45 p.m. and your supervisor has just received a delivery of books that had been lost in the mail for three weeks which need to be on display by


Monday morning. You are finishing an inventory when the boss approaches you and asks you to work extra hours (until 9:00 p.m.) to get the display ready, but you can’t stay. 4. Complaint (+P, +D) – (*Distractor) It is the last class of the semester and your professor has just returned the final paper that represented 35% of the final grade. You spent a month researching and writing your paper and you were happy with the finished product. This is the first class you have taken with Professor (name of Professor) and you have not interacted with him outside the classroom. You feel that the grade is unfair and you go to his office during his office hours to complain. 5. Invitation (+P, +D) – Farewell (Critical item) You have been working at 3M in Minneapolis as a sales representative for the last five years. You have a good working relationship with your boss although you do not socialize together outside the office. Your boss has always been supportive of your ideas and has been instrumental in your receiving a recent promotion. After working for him for three years, he has recently been promoted and will become the Manager of the Latin American Sales Division which will require his relocation to Mexico City next month. He is having a party next Saturday evening at a restaurant and is inviting you and other members of his sales group to celebrate his promotion and as a farewell, but you are unable to attend.

Informal situations: Equal status 6. Compliment (–P, –D) – (*Distractor) You are majoring in Spanish at the University and have a good friend who is also a Spanish major. As a result, you both have been in the same classes for two years and frequently hang out together. You don’t have any classes together this semester and you haven’t seen him around for a couple of weeks. You are walking across campus and see him pull up in a brand new black BMW convertible. You walk over to the car to compliment him. 7. Request (–P, +D) – Notes (Critical item) You are taking a course in Latin American literature this semester. You haven’t missed this class once this semester and consider yourself a diligent student. So far you have a good average in the class, not because it is easy for you, but because you have worked very hard. Among your classmates, you have a reputation for taking very good notes. The professor has just announced that the midterm exam is next week. One of your classmates, who is taking class with you for the first time this semester and who has frequently missed the class, asks you for your notes. You haven’t interacted with him outside the class, but have occasionally done small group work together in class. When the class ends, he approaches you for your notes, but you don’t want to lend them to him. 8. Invitation (–P, –D) – Birthday (Critical item) You are walking across campus when you run into a good friend of yours whom you haven’t seen for about a month. You and he have been studying in the same program at the University for three years, and have studied and written papers together in the past, but you don’t have any classes together this semester since you have been doing an internship off-campus. He invites you to his 21st birthday party at his house next Friday night at 8:00 p.m. He tells you that a group of mutual friends that you both used to hang out with and whom you haven’t seen since the se-

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mester started will also be there. You know that this would be a good opportunity to see everyone again and to celebrate this special occasion with him. Unfortunately, you cannot make it. 9. Apology (–P, –D) – (*Distractor) You and a friend from your Spanish Grammar and Composition class meet every week to review the material and to study for exams. You are usually punctual, but for the last two sessions, you have been late. The midterm is coming up next week and you have promised to do your best to be at this week’s session on time. There is no way to get in touch with him to let him know you’ll be late, so you arrive at the library half an hour late. Apologize to your friend. 10. Suggestion (–P, –D) – Bar (Critical item) You are having lunch at the Dinky Dome about half an hour before your (name of class). While eating, another student from this class comes to join you at your table. You have worked on projects in class and have gone out together occasionally, but are not close friends since you have only known each other since the beginning of the semester. Over lunch you begin to discuss different types of music and you realize that you have similar taste. After about 20 minutes you finish eating and are both getting your books together to walk over to the class, when he suggests skipping class and going to a bar down the street to hear a new band, but you don’t want to go.


Appendix IB. Role plays (Mexicans)

Instrucciones Se le pide participar en 10 situaciones. Trate de responder naturalmente como Ud. lo haría en una situación real. Usted. va a interactuar las situaciones con otro estudiante mexicano. Las situaciones ocurren en la Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala. Si hay algo en las situaciones que no entiende, por favor pregunte.

Situaciones formales: Estatus desigual 1. Disculpa (+P, +D) – (*Distractor) Usted tiene una reunión con el Prof. (nombre del profesor) en su oficina a las 4:00 p.m. para repasar algunas preguntas y discutir las lecturas de la clase antes del examen en su clase de (nombre de la clase) la próxima semana. Ésta es la primera clase que Ud. toma con él. La clase se reúne dos veces por semana, y Ud. ya ha faltado a clase varias veces este semestre. Su relación con su profesor es sólo académica durante la clase, y ésta es la primera ocasión que Ud. va a su oficina. Usted sabe que su profesor sale de su oficina a las 5:00 p.m. Desafortunadamente, Ud. no tiene teléfono celular para llamarlo y decirle que llegará tarde. Usted llega media hora tarde para su reunión. Discúlpese con su profesor. 2. Sugerencia (+P, +D) – Asesor (Critical item) Usted es estudiante universitario en la Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala y como la matriculación es la próxima semana, está organizando su plan de estudios para el próximo semestre. Usted ya tiene planeadas tentativamente las materias que piensa tomar el próximo semestre, pero necesita discutirlo con su asesor y recibir su aprobación. Aunque Ud. tomó una clase con este profesor en su primer semestre, no ha tenido otro contacto con él mas que durante sus asesorías una vez por semestre. Usted tiene una reunión en su oficina con él para revisar las materias que Ud. ya tiene planeadas para tomar el próximo semestre. Cuando Ud. llega a la oficina, su profesor está revisando la lista de materias, y durante la conversación, le sugiere que tome otra clase en (nombre de la clase) pero Ud. no quiere. 3. Pedido (+P, +D) – Librería (Critical item) Usted tiene un trabajo de medio tiempo en la librería de la Universidad de Tlaxcala que le da dinero extra para sus gastos personales desde el principio del semestre. La librería abre de las 9:00 a.m. a las 7:00 p.m. de lunes a viernes y Ud. trabaja de las 3:00 p.m. a las 7:00 p. m. toda la semana. Se lleva bien con su jefe, pero no son amigos y no llevan una relación social fuera del trabajo. Hoy es viernes y son las 6:45 p.m. Su jefe acaba de recibir un paquete de libros que se había perdido en el correo por tres semanas. Los libros necesitan estar listos en los estantes para disposición de los estudiantes el lunes por la mañana. Usted está por terminar un inventario

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cuando su jefe se acerca a Ud. y le pide que se quede a trabajar dos horas más (hasta las 9:00 p.m.) con el fin de tener los libros ordenados para el lunes, pero usted no puede quedarse. 4. Queja (+P, +D) – (*Distractor) Es la última clase del semestre y su profesor le acaba de devolver el trabajo final que representa 35% de la nota final. Usted pasó un mes buscando información y escribiendo el trabajo, y quedó contento con el producto final. Ésta es la primera clase que usted toma con el profesor (nombre del profesor) con quien no lleva una relación social fuera de clase. Usted cree que la nota no es justa y va a la oficina de su profesor para quejarse. 5. Invitación (+P, +D) – Fiesta de despedida (Critical item) Usted ha estado trabajando en una compañía de productos de computación IBM como supervisor de ventas en la ciudad de Tlaxcala desde hace cinco años. Usted lleva una buena relación de trabajo con su jefe, aunque no interactúan socialmente fuera de la oficina. Su jefe siempre lo ha apoyado en sus ideas y le ha ayudado a subir de puesto últimamente. Después de trabajar para él por tres años, ahora han ascendido de puesto a su jefe y tendrá el puesto de Director General de la Compañía Latinoamericana de Ventas y será re-ubicado en la Ciudad de México el próximo mes. Su jefe está organizando una fiesta de despedida el próximo sábado a las 7:00 p.m. en un restaurante y lo está invitando a Ud. y a otros miembros de la sección de ventas a celebrar su nuevo puesto, y además como despedida. Desafortunadamente, Ud. no puede asistir.

Situaciones informales: Igualdad 6. Cumplido (–P, –D) – (*Distractor) Estudias en la Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala y tienes un amigo que estudia en el mismo departamento que tú. Ustedes han tomado clases por dos años y salen a dar la vuelta con frecuencia. Este semestre los dos toman clases diferentes y no se han visto por más de dos semanas. Al pasar por el estacionamiento del departamento, ves que tu amigo acaba de llegar en un carraso del año, un Grand Marquis. Al verlo, te diriges hacia él para felicitarlo por su carro. 7. Petición (–P, +D) – Apuntes (Critical item) Este semestre estás tomando un curso de (nombre de la clase). No has faltado a esta clase ni una vez este semestre y te consideras un estudiante responsable. Hasta el momento, tienes un buen promedio en la clase, no porque la clase sea fácil para ti, sino porque has trabajado mucho. Entre tus compañeros, tienes la reputación de tomar muy buenos apuntes. El profesor acaba de anunciar que el primer examen del semestre es la próxima semana. Uno de tus compañeros de clase, que toma la clase contigo este semestre por la primera vez, y quien ha faltado a la clase con frecuencia, te pide tus apuntes. No llevas una relación de amigos con él fuera de clase, pero en ocasiones han hecho trabajo en clase juntos. Cuando termina la clase, él se dirige a ti para pedirte tus apuntes de la clase. Pero tú no quieres prestárselos. 8. Invitación (–P, –D) – Fiesta de cumpleaños (Critical item) Vas caminando por el departamento de tu universidad cuando te encuentras con un buen amigo a quien no has visto por casi un mes. Los dos han estado estudiando en el mismo departamento por tres años, y han estudiado y hecho trabajos de clase juntos en el pasado. Ya no toman clases juntos este semestre porque tú has estado haciendo tu servicio social fuera del departamento. Tu amigo, que va a cumplir 21 años, te invita a su fiesta de cumpleaños en su casa el próximo


viernes a las 8:00 p.m. Te dice que un grupo de amigos de ambos con quienes salían antes, y a quienes no has visto desde que comenzó el semestre, también van a estar ahí. Sabes que será una buena oportunidad para ver a todos de nuevo y celebrar esta ocasión especial con tu amigo. Pero desafortunadamente, no puedes ir. 9. Disculpa (*Distractor) Tú y tu compañero de la clase de (nombre de la clase) se ven cada semana para repasar los apuntes de clase y estudiar para los exámenes. Generalmente, tú eres puntual, pero en las dos últimas sesiones has estado llegando tarde. El examen parcial es la próxima semana y le has prometido a tu compañero llegar a tiempo a la reunión de esta semana. En camino a la reunión, sabes que vas a llegar tarde otra vez, y no hay forma de comunicarte con él, así que llegas media hora tarde. Discúlpate con tu compañero. 10. Sugerencia (–P, –D) – Bar (Critical item) Estás almorzando en la cafetería de la universidad justo media hora antes de comenzar tu clase de (nombre de la clase). Mientras estás comiendo, un estudiante de esta clase se sienta a tu mesa. Los dos han trabajado en proyectos de clase, y en ocasiones salen a dar la vuelta juntos, pero no son amigos íntimos, ya que sólo se conocen desde que comenzó este semestre. Mientras almuerzan, los dos platican de diferentes tipos de música y te das cuenta de que a los dos les gusta el mismo tipo de música. Veinte minutos más tarde, terminan de almorzar y se empiezan a alistar para la clase. En ese momento tu compañero sugiere que se vuelen esta clase para ir a ver a un grupo musical que acaba de llegar a la ciudad en un bar que queda cerca de la universidad, pero tú no quieres ir.

Author index

A Al-Issa, A. 2, 45, 48, 50, 52, 169 Allen, H. 63 Al-Shalawi, H. G. 2, 48 Arndt, H. 2, 23, 24, 34 Arundale, R. 2, 3, 11, 12, 14, 31, 32, 33, 159 Austin, J. L. 36, 37, 38, 41

Corominas, J. 9, 10 Coulthard, M. 39 Covarrubias, P. 21, 162 Cramer, P. K. 2, 48 Crookall, D. 60 Cummings, M. 45, 47, 51, 59, 60 Curcó, C. 3, 21, 166

B Bacelar Da Silva, A. J. 45 Bardovi-Harlig, K. 2, 45, 46, 52, 61, 67, 168, 170 Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 2, 14, 31 Barron, A. 171 Beckers, A. M. 2, 48 Beebe, L. 2, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59, 60, 67, 168, 169 Benveniste, E. 40 Billmyer, K. 60 Blewitt, P. 45, 49 Blum-Kulka, S. 6, 38, 39, 53, 59, 173 Bourdieu, P. 29, 30 Bravo, D. 3, 20 Bresnahan, M. J. 2, 48, 168, 169 Briz, A. 3 Brown, J. 58 Brown, P. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 29, 30, 33, 42, 73, 87, 115, 126, 162, 164

D Dahl, M. 59, 60, 61 Davis, K. 58 De Fina, A. 21, 166 Dillon, G. L. 16 Duranti, A. 58, 68 Durkheim, E. 13

C Caffi, C. 61 Chen, H. J. 45, 47, 50 Chen, X. 1, 42, 47, 67, 168 Chodorowska-Pilch, M. 10 Coates, J. 40, 81, 127 Cocroft, B. A. 167 Cohen, A. D. 5, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 72, 139, 156, 172

E Edmondson, W. 39 Eelen, G. 4, 10, 11, 14, 16, 93, 160 Ehlich, K. 8, 9, 10 Elias, N. 8 Ericsson, A. 5, 60, 61, 67, 139, 156, 172 Eröz, B. 49 F Fanshel, D. 45, 46, 61, 168 Fant, L. 20 Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. 45, 49, 50, 54, 59, 60, 64, 116, 171 Flocker, M. 9 France, P. 8, 9 Fraser, B. 13, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 34, 40, 69 Frege, G. 35 Frescura, M. 45, 48, 50, 168 Fukushima, S. 2 Furumura, Y. 49

G García, C. 3, 46, 48, 50, 53, 54, 67, 168, 170, 171 García, W. 21 Gass, S. 2, 43, 48, 50, 168 Gibbs, R. 39 Goffman, E. 3, 13, 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, 31, 32, 42 Goldbeck, D. 49 Grice, H. P. 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 21, 33 Gu, Y. 16, 19 Gudykunst, W. 73, 74 H Halliday, M. A. K. 33 Hartford, B. S. 2, 45, 46, 52, 61, 67, 168, 170 Haverkate, H. 2, 9, 16, 26, 27, 34, 40 Henstock, M. 49, 50, 54 Henze, R. 58 Hernández-Flores, N. 20 Hill, B. 26 Houck, N. 2, 43, 48, 50, 168 House, J. 38, 39 Hussein, A. 45, 47, 52, 169 I Ide, S. 2, 10, 25, 26, 34, 163 Ikoma, T. 47 Iwata, M. 48, 67 J Jakubowska, E. 2 Janney, R. 2, 23, 24, 34 Jefferson, G. 82 K Kallia, A. 12, 13 Kanemoto, M. 52, 168, 170


Kasper, G. 5, 19, 23, 38, 40, 59, 60, 61 Keenan, E. O. 12 Kinjo, H. 2, 46, 168 Kitao, S. K. 47, 50, 170 Kodama, N. 45, 47 Kubo, S. 38 Kwon, J. 2, 49, 169

N Nelson, G. 2, 49, 52, 54, 169 Nolen, W. 21, 34 Nuyts, J. 40, 81, 127, 130, 132 Nwoye, O. G. 19, 23

L Labov, W. 2, 5, 45, 46, 58, 61, 168 Lakoff, R. 15, 22, 34, 64, 137 Laohaburanakit, K. 45, 47 Lavandera, B. 20, 42 Lebra, T. S. 19 Leech, G. 12, 16, 22, 24, 34, 74, 75, 161 Lerner, G. 44 Levinson, S. 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 29, 30, 33, 42, 73, 87, 115, 126, 162, 164 Liao, C. 2, 48, 168, 169 Locher, M. 2, 3, 30, 32, 34, 35, 40, 85, 136, 159 Lyons, J. 127 Lyuh, I. 2, 47, 169

P Palmer, F. R. 40, 127 Pavlidou, T. 162 Placencia, M. E. 3, 20, 21, 38, 61 Pomerantz, A. 44, 51

M Mao, L. 19 Margalef-Boada, T. 3, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 171 Márquez Reiter, R. 2, 3, 6, 21, 38, 54, 162, 173 Matsumoto, Y. 19 Meier, A. 31, 34 Micheau, C. 9 Mills, S. 6, 54, 173 Moliner, M. 10 Moreno Fernández, F. 62 Moriyama, T. 45, 46, 168 Mueller, R. 39 Murillo Medrano, J. 55, 173

O O’Keefe, B. 2, 47

R Ramos, J. 3, 46, 53 Resnik, M. 8 Robinson, M. 47, 50 Rubin, J. 67 S Sadler, R. W. 49 Saeki, M. 2, 47 Sasaki, M. 45, 48, 50 Saunders, D. 60 Sbisà, M. 41 Scarcella, R. 64 Schegloff, E. 58 Schiffrin, D. 37, 38, 39, 41, 64 Schrader-Kniffki, M. 45, 50, 168 Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. 4, 27, 28, 32, 35, 69, 94, 108, 113 Searle, J. 36, 37, 38, 41, 42 Seliger, H. W. 61 Shigeta, M. 46 Shimura, A. 47 Sifianou, M. 2 Simon, H. 5, 60, 61, 67, 139, 156, 172 Sinclair, J. 39 Smith, M. J. 45, 46, 170 Smith, C. 48, 50

Spencer-Oatey, H. 2, 24, 25, 31, 32, 34, 69 Stevens, P. B. 2, 47, 169 T Takahashi, T. 2, 46, 51 Tannen, D. 30 Tickle, A. L. 46, 168 Ting-Toomey, S. 73, 74 Torrens Salemi, A. M. 45, 49 Trosborg, A. 38 Turnbull, W. 49, 50 U Ueda, K. 45, 46, 168 Uliss-Weltz, R. 2, 51 V Vanderveken, D. 38 Varghese, M. 60 VonCanon, A. L. 3, 49, 50, 53, 54, 171 W Watts, R. 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 22, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 85, 136, 159 Wenger, E. 63, 93, 170 Werkhofer, K. 14, 18 Widjaja, C. S. 48, 50 Wierzbicka, A. 2, 40, 81, 127, 134, 162 Wittgenstein, L. 36 Wolfson, N. 63 Wootton, A. J. 45, 46, 50 X Xing, J. 25 Y Ye, L. 1, 2, 42, 47 Z Zhang, Y. 1, 2, 42, 47 Zimin, S. 20, 42

Subject index

A adjuncts to refusal 52, 79, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 114 advisor 70, 94, 95, 96, 103, 104, 106, 127, 140, 149 agreement 17, 81, 86, 90, 92, 93, 108 alternative 76, 86, 87, 97, 108, 114, 117, 118, 137, 160 apology/regret 75, 86, 87, 97, 114 appropriate behavior 15, 22, 30, 33, 148, 163 see also socially appropriate behavior 21, 155 relational work 30 assertiveness 46 asymmetric system 28, 96, 102 C camaraderie 15, 115, 125, 148, 149, 166 closeness 148, 152, 155, 156, 162, 166 code of confianza 21, 149, 162 code of respeto 21, 148, 162 community of practice 63, 93, 170 compromise 97, 115, 121, 137, 143, 154, 160, 163 confianza 20, 148, 149, 152, 155, 156, 166 conventional indirectness 6, 38, 173 conversational contract 21, 25 cooperative principle 11 cross-cultural 15, 27, 28, 39, 44, 53, 61, 152, 160, 163, 168

D deference 9, 15, 17, 20, 28, 53, 70, 94, 95, 108, 144, 152, 161, 167 diminutives 27, 161 direct refusal 53, 73, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 113, 149, 150, 151, 161 see also directness 73, 93, 145, 156, 166 discourse completion task (DCT) 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 59, 60 see also written questionnaire 45, 59 dispreferred response 51, 77, 91, 118, 168 distance 15, 17, 20, 28, 69, 74, 151 distractor 68 E empathy 81, 86, 91, 114, 138 epistemic modality 40, 81, 126, 127 see also epistemic expressions 40, 81, 83, 126, 127, 138, 164 epistemic markers 40 degree modifiers 40, 74, 126, 127, 132, 133, 164 mental state predicates 40, 81, 127, 128, 129 tag questions 40, 82, 126, 127, 128, 134, 164, 168 modal adverbs 40, 126, 127, 131 equal status 52, 110, 128, 134, 138, 144, 147, 149, 161, 169, 170

ethnographic approach 58, 61 expectations 25, 29, 30, 54, 134, 155, 172 external modification 39, 79, 87 see also supportive moves 39, 100, 104, 110, 111, 116, 118, 122, 124 F face 2, 3, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 70, 76, 94, 95, 96, 108, 114, 137, 140, 144, 150, 152, 160, 163, 166 see also affiliation 20, 113, 122, 147, 156, 161, 162, 167, 169 autonomy 20, 24, 28, 113, 161 group face 19 independence 27, 28, 137, 161, 167 involvement 24, 27, 28, 32, 137, 155, 161, 167, 171 face systems 27, 28, 32, 69, 94, 95, 126, 137, 150, 160, 162 see also hierarchical face 28, 96, 140, 160, 162 deference face 28, 108, 144, 160 solidarity face 28, 113, 147, 152, 161 face-threatening act 17, 18, 126, 155, 164 facework 2, 13, 14, 19, 23, 30, 31, 99, 102, 138 familiarity 8, 17, 20, 69, 93, 148, 155, 156, 162


felicity conditions 37, 38, 41 see also essential 37 preparatory 37 propositional content 37 sincerity 37 forms of address 8, 26, 107, 162, 167 see also address forms 162 tú 8, 114 usted 9, 148, 162, 167 vuestra merced 9 frame 30, 130, 172 G gratitude 86, 97, 138 group identity 25, 163 H habitus 29 head act 39, 53, 86, 98, 104, 109, 116, 122 hedge 40, 74, 126 see also epistemic modality I implicature 12 impolite behavior 10, 29, 31 indefinite reply 75, 86, 103 indirect refusal 74, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 104, 114, 120, 149 see also indirectness 16, 37, 74, 86, 93, 96, 149, 150, 151, 169 conventional indirectness non-conventional indirectness insistence 72, 135, 137, 153, 154, 155, 156, 163 intercultural communication 27 internal modification 40, 102, 126, 127, 164 see also epistemic modality mitigators interpersonal politeness 23, 24 intimacy 149, 152 invitation 19, 53, 54, 72, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 114, 116, 135, 144, 153, 163 irony 16, 18 irony principle 16

L laughter 23, 113 line of behavior 29 linguistic politeness 10, 17, 18, 20, 25, 27, 29, 33, 42, 162, 164 see also discernment 25 volition 25 Brown & Levinson 17 M management of face 24 maxims (Leech) 16 see also agreement 16 approbation 16 generosity 16 modesty 16 tact 16 sympathy 16 maxims of conversation (Grice) 11, 12 see also quantity 12 quality 12 relation 12 manner 12 maxim of politeness 12 mitigated refusal 74, 86, 89, 97, 103, 137, 161, 170 mitigators 74, 127, 131, 132, 135, 136, 138, 165 N negotiation 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 87, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 120, 160, 166 see also face non-conventional indirectness 38 O off record 18 on record 18, 73, 162 P perception 60, 64, 71, 139, 140, 153, 165 polite behavior 10, 15, 19, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 163 politeness 13, 15, 26, 30 see also negative politeness 17, 19, 162

positive politeness 17, 23, 24 politeness1 10, 32, 85, 159, 165 see also expressive politeness1 4, 10 classificatory politeness1 10 metapragmatic politeness1 10, 139 politeness2 10, 33, 34 politeness principle 16 politic behavior 29, 31 see also linguistic politeness relational work positive opinion 80, 86, 87, 114, 170 postponement 43, 86, 87 power 17, 20, 28, 69, 70, 130, 140, 142, 156, 160, 162, 167 pragmalinguistic 25, 81 pragmatic scales (Leech) 16 see also cost-benefit 16 social distance 16 optionality 16 indirectness 16 pragmatic strategies 72, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95 pragmatic variation 93, 160, 171 promise to comply 78, 86 R rapport management 24 see also management of face 24 quality of face 24 identity of face 24 sociality rights 24 equity rights 24 association rights 24 reason/explanation 75, 86, 120 refusal 42, 44 see also children refusal 49 guilt refusal 46 Italian refusal 48 Japanese refusal 46, 49, 168 school refusal 49 straightforward refusal 140, 160 toddler refusal 49 word refusal 49 refusal sequence 39, 40, 42, 81, 126

see also pre-sequence 39, 79, 121 post-sequence 39, 121 refusing an invitation 53, 98, 114, 153, 171 regret 75, 76, 96, 97, 99, 115, 170, 171 relational work 29, 30, 72, 86, 87, 94, 95, 108, 161, 164 see also negatively marked behavior 30 positively marked behavior 30 (im)polite behavior 30 reliability 58, 82 repetition 77, 86, 114, 120 request for information 77, 103, 121 retrieval cues 60, 172 role play 46, 53, 60, 64, 172 see also open role play 63, 60, 64 closed role play 46, 49, 60, 61 S self-affirmation 20

Subject index 195

sequential organization 39 see also uptake 39 head 39 appealer 39 set condition 78, 86 short-term memory 60, 172 silence 50, 60, 168 situational variation 94, 95 social distance 17, 20, 70, 94, 95 social power 17, 28, 94, 165, 166 solidarity 28, 53, 94, 95, 113, 115, 161, 162, 168 speech act 35, 36 see also locutionary act 36 illocutionary act 36, 38, 74 perlocutionary act 36 speech act sequences 39, 40 subjectivity 81, 126, 130, 164 suggestion 69, 94, 102, 104, 105, 120, 121, 122, 124 supportive facework 19, 23, 30, 99, 115 supportive strategies (facework) 23

see also supportive positive messages 23 nonsupportive positive messages 23 supportive negative messages 23 nonsupportive negative messages 23 symmetric face system 28, 114, 120, 165, 166 U unequal status 28, 85, 87, 132, 167 V validity 58, 172 verbal reports 50, 71, 141, 156 see also retrospective verbal reports 63, 64, 140 W weight of imposition 28 willingness 80, 86, 114 wish 78, 86, 99

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 175 Gómez González, María de los Ángeles, J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Elsa M. GonzálezÁlvarez (eds.): Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison. Expected April 2008 174 Heyd, Theresa: Email Hoaxes. Form, function, genre ecology. Expected March 2008 173 Zanotto, Mara Sofia, Lynne Cameron and Marilda C. Cavalcanti (eds.): Confronting Metaphor in Use. An applied linguistic approach. vii, 310 pp. + index. Expected March 2008 172 Benz, Anton and Peter Kühnlein (eds.): Constraints in Discourse. xi, 278 pp. + index. Expected March 2008 171 Félix-Brasdefer, J. César: Politeness in Mexico and the United States. A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals. 2008. xiv, 195 pp. 170 Oakley, Todd and Anders Hougaard (eds.): Mental Spaces in Discourse and Interaction. vi, 256 pp. + index. Expected February 2008 169 Connor, Ulla, Ed Nagelhout and William Rozycki (eds.): Contrastive Rhetoric. Reaching to intercultural rhetoric. viii, 324 pp. Expected January 2008 168 Proost, Kristel: Conceptual Structure in Lexical Items. The lexicalisation of communication concepts in English, German and Dutch. 2007. xii, 304 pp. 167 Bousfield, Derek: Impoliteness in Interaction. xiii, 281 pp. Expected January 2008 166 Nakane, Ikuko: Silence in Intercultural Communication. Perceptions and performance. 2007. xii, 240 pp. 165 Bublitz, Wolfram and Axel Hübler (eds.): Metapragmatics in Use. 2007. viii, 302 pp. 164 Englebretson, Robert (ed.): Stancetaking in Discourse. Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction. 2007. viii, 323 pp. 163 Lytra, Vally: Play Frames and Social Identities. Contact encounters in a Greek primary school. 2007. xii, 300 pp. 162 Fetzer, Anita (ed.): Context and Appropriateness. Micro meets macro. 2007. vi, 265 pp. 161 Celle, Agnès and Ruth Huart (eds.): Connectives as Discourse Landmarks. 2007. viii, 212 pp. 160 Fetzer, Anita and Gerda Eva Lauerbach (eds.): Political Discourse in the Media. Cross-cultural perspectives. 2007. viii, 379 pp. 159 Maynard, Senko K.: Linguistic Creativity in Japanese Discourse. Exploring the multiplicity of self, perspective, and voice. 2007. xvi, 356 pp. 158 Walker, Terry: Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues. Trials, Depositions, and Drama Comedy. 2007. xx, 339 pp. 157 Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda: The Language of Business Studies Lectures. A corpus-assisted analysis. 2007. xvi, 236 pp. 156 Vega Moreno, Rosa E.: Creativity and Convention. The pragmatics of everyday figurative speech. 2007. xii, 249 pp. 155 Hedberg, Nancy and Ron Zacharski (eds.): The Grammar–Pragmatics Interface. Essays in honor of Jeanette K. Gundel. 2007. viii, 345 pp. 154 Hübler, Axel: The Nonverbal Shift in Early Modern English Conversation. 2007. x, 281 pp. 153 Arnovick, Leslie K.: Written Reliquaries. The resonance of orality in medieval English texts. 2006. xii, 292 pp. 152 Warren, Martin: Features of Naturalness in Conversation. 2006. x, 272 pp. 151 Suzuki, Satoko (ed.): Emotive Communication in Japanese. 2006. x, 234 pp. 150 Busse, Beatrix: Vocative Constructions in the Language of Shakespeare. 2006. xviii, 525 pp. 149 Locher, Miriam A.: Advice Online. Advice-giving in an American Internet health column. 2006. xvi, 277 pp. 148 Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Dahl and Torodd Kinn: Academic Voices. Across languages and disciplines. 2006. x, 309 pp. 147 Hinrichs, Lars: Codeswitching on the Web. English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. 2006. x, 302 pp. 146 Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa: Collaborating towards Coherence. Lexical cohesion in English discourse. 2006. ix, 192 pp. 145 Kurhila, Salla: Second Language Interaction. 2006. vii, 257 pp.

144 Bührig, Kristin and Jan D. ten Thije (eds.): Beyond Misunderstanding. Linguistic analyses of intercultural communication. 2006. vi, 339 pp. 143 Baker, Carolyn, Michael Emmison and Alan Firth (eds.): Calling for Help. Language and social interaction in telephone helplines. 2005. xviii, 352 pp. 142 Sidnell, Jack: Talk and Practical Epistemology. The social life of knowledge in a Caribbean community. 2005. xvi, 255 pp. 141 Zhu, Yunxia: Written Communication across Cultures. A sociocognitive perspective on business genres. 2005. xviii, 216 pp. 140 Butler, Christopher S., María de los Ángeles Gómez González and Susana M. Doval-Suárez (eds.): The Dynamics of Language Use. Functional and contrastive perspectives. 2005. xvi, 413 pp. 139 Lakoff, Robin T. and Sachiko Ide (eds.): Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. 2005. xii, 342 pp. 138 Müller, Simone: Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. 2005. xviii, 290 pp. 137 Morita, Emi: Negotiation of Contingent Talk. The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. 2005. xvi, 240 pp. 136 Sassen, Claudia: Linguistic Dimensions of Crisis Talk. Formalising structures in a controlled language. 2005. ix, 230 pp. 135 Archer, Dawn: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640–1760). A sociopragmatic analysis. 2005. xiv, 374 pp. 134 Skaffari, Janne, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik (eds.): Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past. 2005. x, 418 pp. 133 Marnette, Sophie: Speech and Thought Presentation in French. Concepts and strategies. 2005. xiv, 379 pp. 132 Onodera, Noriko O.: Japanese Discourse Markers. Synchronic and diachronic discourse analysis. 2004. xiv, 253 pp. 131 Janoschka, Anja: Web Advertising. New forms of communication on the Internet. 2004. xiv, 230 pp. 130 Halmari, Helena and Tuija Virtanen (eds.): Persuasion Across Genres. A linguistic approach. 2005. x, 257 pp. 129 Taboada, María Teresa: Building Coherence and Cohesion. Task-oriented dialogue in English and Spanish. 2004. xvii, 264 pp. 128 Cordella, Marisa: The Dynamic Consultation. A discourse analytical study of doctor–patient communication. 2004. xvi, 254 pp. 127 Brisard, Frank, Michael Meeuwis and Bart Vandenabeele (eds.): Seduction, Community, Speech. A Festschrift for Herman Parret. 2004. vi, 202 pp. 126 Wu, Yi’an: Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese. Text and Cognition. 2004. xviii, 236 pp. 125 Lerner, Gene H. (ed.): Conversation Analysis. Studies from the first generation. 2004. x, 302 pp. 124 Vine, Bernadette: Getting Things Done at Work. The discourse of power in workplace interaction. 2004. x, 278 pp. 123 Márquez Reiter, Rosina and María Elena Placencia (eds.): Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. 2004. xvi, 383 pp. 122 González, Montserrat: Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative. The case of English and Catalan. 2004. xvi, 410 pp. 121 Fetzer, Anita: Recontextualizing Context. Grammaticality meets appropriateness. 2004. x, 272 pp. 120 Aijmer, Karin and Anna-Brita Stenström (eds.): Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora. 2004. viii, 279 pp. 119 Hiltunen, Risto and Janne Skaffari (eds.): Discourse Perspectives on English. Medieval to modern. 2003. viii, 243 pp. 118 Cheng, Winnie: Intercultural Conversation. 2003. xii, 279 pp. 117 Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina: Stance in Talk. A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. 2004. xvi, 260 pp. 116 Grant, Colin B. (ed.): Rethinking Communicative Interaction. New interdisciplinary horizons. 2003. viii, 330 pp. 115 Kärkkäinen, Elise: Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. 2003. xii, 213 pp.

114 Kühnlein, Peter, Hannes Rieser and Henk Zeevat (eds.): Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium. 2003. xii, 400 pp. 113 Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Linda L. Thornburg (eds.): Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. 2003. xii, 285 pp. 112 Lenz, Friedrich (ed.): Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person. 2003. xiv, 279 pp. 111 Ensink, Titus and Christoph Sauer (eds.): Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse. 2003. viii, 227 pp. 110 Androutsopoulos, Jannis K. and Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.): Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. 2003. viii, 343 pp. 109 Mayes, Patricia: Language, Social Structure, and Culture. A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. 2003. xiv, 228 pp. 108 Barron, Anne: Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. 2003. xviii, 403 pp. 107 Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.): Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. 2003. viii, 446 pp. 106 Busse, Ulrich: Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus. Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns. 2002. xiv, 344 pp. 105 Blackwell, Sarah: Implicatures in Discourse. The case of Spanish NP anaphora. 2003. xvi, 303 pp. 104 Beeching, Kate: Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. 2002. x, 251 pp. 103 Fetzer, Anita and Christiane Meierkord (eds.): Rethinking Sequentiality. Linguistics meets conversational interaction. 2002. vi, 300 pp. 102 Leafgren, John: Degrees of Explicitness. Information structure and the packaging of Bulgarian subjects and objects. 2002. xii, 252 pp. 101 Luke, K. K. and Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou (eds.): Telephone Calls. Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures. 2002. x, 295 pp. 100 Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. and Ken Turner (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 2. 2003. viii, 496 pp. 99 Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. and Ken Turner (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 1. 2003. xii, 388 pp. 98 Duszak, Anna (ed.): Us and Others. Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures. 2002. viii, 522 pp. 97 Maynard, Senko K.: Linguistic Emotivity. Centrality of place, the topic-comment dynamic, and an ideology of pathos in Japanese discourse. 2002. xiv, 481 pp. 96 Haverkate, Henk: The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood. 2002. vi, 241 pp. 95 Fitzmaurice, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. 2002. viii, 263 pp. 94 McIlvenny, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. 2002. x, 332 pp. 93 Baron, Bettina and Helga Kotthoff (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. 2002. xxiv, 357 pp. 92 Gardner, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. xxii, 281 pp. 91 Gross, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. xxviii, 341 pp. 90 Kenesei, István and Robert M. Harnish (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. xxii, 352 pp. 89 Itakura, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. xviii, 231 pp. 88 Bayraktaroğlu, Arın and Maria Sifianou (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. The case of Greek and Turkish. 2001. xiv, 439 pp. 87 Mushin, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative Retelling. 2001. xviii, 244 pp. 86 Ifantidou, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. 2001. xii, 225 pp. 85 Collins, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. xx, 384 pp. 84 Andersen, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. ix, 352 pp. 83 Márquez Reiter, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. xviii, 225 pp. 82 Khalil, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. x, 274 pp.

81 Di Luzio, Aldo, Susanne Günthner and Franca Orletti (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. 2001. xvi, 341 pp. 80 Ungerer, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. xiv, 286 pp. 79 Andersen, Gisle and Thorstein Fretheim (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. viii, 273 pp. 78 Sell, Roger D.: Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. xiv, 348 pp. 77 Vanderveken, Daniel and Susumu Kubo (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. 2002. vi, 328 pp. 76 Matsui, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. xii, 251 pp. 75 Pilkington, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. xiv, 214 pp. 74 Trosborg, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. xvi, 256 pp. 73 Hester, Stephen K. and David Francis (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. viii, 326 pp. 72 Marmaridou, Sophia S.A.: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. xii, 322 pp. 71 Gómez González, María de los Ángeles: The Theme–Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. xxiv, 438 pp. 70 Sorjonen, Marja-Leena: Responding in Conversation. A study of response particles in Finnish. 2001. x, 330 pp. 69 Noh, Eun-Ju: Metarepresentation. A relevance-theory approach. 2000. xii, 242 pp. 68 Arnovick, Leslie K.: Diachronic Pragmatics. Seven case studies in English illocutionary development. 2000. xii, 196 pp. 67 Taavitsainen, Irma, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta (eds.): Writing in Nonstandard English. 2000. viii, 404 pp. 66 Jucker, Andreas H., Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis. 1999. viii, 478 pp. 65 Cooren, François: The Organizing Property of Communication. 2000. xvi, 272 pp. 64 Svennevig, Jan: Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A study of initial interactions. 2000. x, 384 pp. 63 Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk and Eija Ventola (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it. Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997. 1999. xiv, 300 pp. 62 Tzanne, Angeliki: Talking at Cross-Purposes. The dynamics of miscommunication. 2000. xiv, 263 pp. 61 Mills, Margaret H. (ed.): Slavic Gender Linguistics. 1999. xviii, 251 pp. 60 Jacobs, Geert: Preformulating the News. An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases. 1999. xviii, 428 pp. 59 Kamio, Akio and Ken-ichi Takami (eds.): Function and Structure. In honor of Susumu Kuno. 1999. x, 398 pp. 58 Rouchota, Villy and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.): Current Issues in Relevance Theory. 1998. xii, 368 pp. 57 Jucker, Andreas H. and Yael Ziv (eds.): Discourse Markers. Descriptions and theory. 1998. x, 363 pp. 56 Tanaka, Hiroko: Turn-Taking in Japanese Conversation. A Study in Grammar and Interaction. 2000. xiv, 242 pp. 55 Allwood, Jens and Peter Gärdenfors (eds.): Cognitive Semantics. Meaning and cognition. 1999. x, 201 pp. 54 Hyland, Ken: Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. 1998. x, 308 pp. 53 Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt: The Function of Discourse Particles. A study with special reference to spoken standard French. 1998. xii, 418 pp. 52 Gillis, Steven and Annick De Houwer (eds.): The Acquisition of Dutch. With a Preface by Catherine E. Snow. 1998. xvi, 444 pp. 51 Boulima, Jamila: Negotiated Interaction in Target Language Classroom Discourse. 1999. xiv, 338 pp. 50 Grenoble, Lenore A.: Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse. 1998. xviii, 338 pp. 49 Kurzon, Dennis: Discourse of Silence. 1998. vi, 162 pp. 48 Kamio, Akio: Territory of Information. 1997. xiv, 227 pp. 47 Chesterman, Andrew: Contrastive Functional Analysis. 1998. viii, 230 pp. 46 Georgakopoulou, Alexandra: Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. 1997. xvii, 282 pp.

45 Paltridge, Brian: Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. 1997. x, 192 pp. 44 Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca and Sandra J. Harris: Managing Language. The discourse of corporate meetings. 1997. ix, 295 pp. 43 Janssen, Theo and Wim van der Wurff (eds.): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. 1996. x, 312 pp. 42 Kotthoff, Helga and Ruth Wodak (eds.): Communicating Gender in Context. 1997. xxvi, 424 pp. 41 Ventola, Eija and Anna Mauranen (eds.): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. 1996. xiv, 258 pp. 40 Diamond, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a close-knit social network. 1996. viii, 184 pp. 39 Herring, Susan C. (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. 1996. viii, 326 pp. 38 Fretheim, Thorstein and Jeanette K. Gundel (eds.): Reference and Referent Accessibility. 1996. xii, 312 pp. 37 Carston, Robyn and Seiji Uchida (eds.): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. 1998. x, 300 pp. 36 Chilton, Paul, Mikhail V. Ilyin and Jacob L. Mey (eds.): Political Discourse in Transition in Europe 1989–1991. 1998. xi, 272 pp. 35 Jucker, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. 1995. xvi, 624 pp. 34 Barbe, Katharina: Irony in Context. 1995. x, 208 pp. 33 Goossens, Louis, Paul Pauwels, Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, Anne-Marie SimonVandenbergen and Johan Vanparys: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. 1995. xii, 254 pp. 32 Shibatani, Masayoshi and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. In honor of Charles J. Fillmore. 1996. x, 322 pp. 31 Wildgen, Wolfgang: Process, Image, and Meaning. A realistic model of the meaning of sentences and narrative texts. 1994. xii, 281 pp. 30 Wortham, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. 1994. xiv, 178 pp. 29 Barsky, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other. Discourse theory and the Convention refugee hearing. 1994. x, 272 pp. 28 Van de Walle, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. A pilot study in linguistic politeness. 1993. xii, 454 pp. 27 Suter, Hans-Jürg: The Wedding Report. A prototypical approach to the study of traditional text types. 1993. xii, 314 pp. 26 Stygall, Gail: Trial Language. Differential discourse processing and discursive formation. 1994. xii, 226 pp. 25 Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. 1993. x, 346 pp. 24 Maynard, Senko K.: Discourse Modality. Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. 1993. x, 315 pp. 23 Fortescue, Michael, Peter Harder and Lars Kristoffersen (eds.): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. 1992. xiii, 444 pp. 22 Auer, Peter and Aldo Di Luzio (eds.): The Contextualization of Language. 1992. xvi, 402 pp. 21 Searle, John R., Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. 1992. vi, 154 pp. 20 Nuyts, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. 1991. xii, 399 pp. 19 Baker, Carolyn and Allan Luke (eds.): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. 1991. xxi, 287 pp. 18 Johnstone, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. 1991. viii, 130 pp. 17 Piéraut-Le Bonniec, Gilberte and Marlene Dolitsky (eds.): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Some aspects of contemporary French-language psycholinguistics research. 1991. vi, 342 pp.

16 Mann, William C. and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Discourse Description. Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. 1992. xiii, 409 pp. 15 Komter, Martha L.: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. A study of talks, tasks and ideas. 1991. viii, 252 pp. 14 Schwartz, Ursula V.: Young Children's Dyadic Pretend Play. A communication analysis of plot structure and plot generative strategies. 1991. vi, 151 pp. 13 Nuyts, Jan, A. Machtelt Bolkestein and Co Vet (eds.): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory. A functional view. 1990. xii, 348 pp. 12 Abraham, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. 1991. viii, 338 pp. 11 Luong, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. 1990. x, 213 pp. 10 Murray, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. 1991. xii, 176 pp. 9 Luke, K. K.: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. 1990. xvi, 329 pp. 8 Young, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code. A study of academic English. 1991. ix, 304 pp. 7 Lindenfeld, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Marketplaces. 1990. viii, 173 pp. 6:3 Blommaert, Jan and Jef Verschueren (eds.): The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication. Selected papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987. Volume 3: The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication. 1991. viii, 249 pp. 6:2 Verschueren, Jef (ed.): Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Selected papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987. Volume 2: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. 1991. viii, 339 pp. 6:1 Verschueren, Jef (ed.): Pragmatics at Issue. Selected papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17–22, 1987. Volume 1: Pragmatics at Issue. 1991. viii, 314 pp. 5 Thelin, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. 1990. xvi, 490 pp. 4 Raffler-Engel, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor–Patient Interaction. 1989. xxxviii, 294 pp. 3 Oleksy, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. 1988. xiv, 282 pp. 2 Barton, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents. A theory of grammatical structure and pragmatic interpretation. 1990. xviii, 247 pp. 1 Walter, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre. An ethnographic study of what it means to those who use it. 1988. xvii, 264 pp.

Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Contrastive Functional Analysis (Pragmatics & Beyond New)

Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Youngspeak in a Multilingual Perspective (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Creativity and Convention: The pragmatics of everyday figurative speech (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas (The United States and the Americas)

Mexico Reading the United States

Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico

The Grammar-Pragmatics Interface: Essays in Honor of Jeanette K. Gundel (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Cognitive Semantics: Meaning and Cognition (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative: The Case of English and Catalan (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Impoliteness in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Humor in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Style Shifting in Japanese (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Conversational Dominance and Gender: A Study of Japanese Speakers in First and Second Language Contexts (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Constraints in Discourse (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, 172)

Constraints in Discourse 2 (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series)

Metapragmatics in Use (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Bats of the United States and Canada

A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada

Contrastive Rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse: A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

The United States and Iran

Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States

Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States

Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States

Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)